<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Apple&rsquo;s Quiet Audio Secret
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Cirrus Logic was once a behind-the-scenes semiconductor company, best known for its specialized audio chips used in car stereos and early portable music devices. 
Founded in Salt Lake City in 1981 as a specialty chip designer, Cirrus spent years competing with much larger firms for space inside consumer gadgets.
But that changed dramatically in the early 2000s.
As Apple began its relentless pursuit of better device sound quality &mdash; starting with the iPod and then moving to the iPhone &mdash; engineers were searching for ultra-efficient chips to deliver crisp, reliable audio in small spaces.
Rather than relying on industry giants, Apple eventually selected Cirrus Logic for its innovative audio codec technology, quietly inserting the small firm&rsquo;s parts into its devices.
By 2010, the iPhone 4 launched with Cirrus Logic embedded inside its audio system &mdash; a transformative moment for the company.
Apple&rsquo;s endorsement was seismic&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Cirrus Logic&rsquo;s net sales more than quadrupled in five years &mdash; from $174.6 million (FY2009) to $714.3 million (FY2014). And by 2014, Apple accounted for about 80% of Cirrus Logic&rsquo;s total sales.
The stock price reflected this trajectory: Cirrus shares swung from under $5 in 2008 to above $37.75 by May 2015, increasing more than 600% during major iPhone product cycles.
The partnership forced Cirrus Logic to innovate at warp speed, regularly ramping up production for each year&rsquo;s global iPhone and, later, iPad or AirPods launches.
Cirrus diversified, acquiring new chip design capabilities and branching into haptic feedback and power management for wireless devices.
The company&rsquo;s fortunes remain tightly wound to Apple, but its expertise and flexibility have carved out a niche in this brutally competitive chip sector.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Cirrus Logic&rsquo;s climb from obscurity to prominence stands as a textbook tale of supply chain &ldquo;kingmaking.&rdquo; 
Rather than inventing the next mainstream tech gadget, Cirrus focused on a single, high-impact function and delivered when Apple called. And Apple&rsquo;s relentless push for innovation means it is always searching for the next breakthrough supplier.
The history of Cirrus Logic shows how a niche supplier can be thrust into the spotlight &mdash; and enjoy dramatic gains &mdash; simply by becoming indispensable to a giant like Apple.
As Apple readies its next big iPhone announcement on Tuesday, Sept. 9, stories like Cirrus&rsquo; make it clear: The right tech partnership can change everything for a small firm.
For today&rsquo;s investors, Cirrus Logic&rsquo;s journey illustrates how quickly fortunes can shift &mdash; and why today&rsquo;s lesser-known companies could be at the threshold of Apple-fueled breakout moments.

[Ed. note: Apple&rsquo;s about to make headlines on Sept. 9 with the launch of the iPhone 17 &mdash; a radical redesign that&rsquo;s set to bring &ldquo;Apple Intelligence&rdquo; to the forefront.
But here&rsquo;s where it gets really exciting: James Altucher&rsquo;s proprietary financial AI has pinpointed a tiny tech company at the heart of this breakthrough. When Tim Cook unveils Apple&rsquo;s next big move, this little-known stock could soar.
James&rsquo; AI isn&rsquo;t guesswork &mdash; it&rsquo;s flagged &ldquo;Blue Spikes&rdquo; before 84.7% of Wall Street&rsquo;s biggest moves for nearly five years straight, with past trades delivering gains of 762%, 2,800% and even over 11,000%.
While returns like these are rare, this opportunity is extraordinary&hellip;And timing is everything. If you wait until after the announcement, it may be too late. Don&rsquo;t miss your chance. <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2475036">Click here now to see the urgent details.]</a>

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Labor Market Hits a Breaking Point
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The Labor Department&rsquo;s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released Wednesday, reports 7.18 million job openings in July.
That&rsquo;s the lowest reading since September 2024 and only the second time since late 2020 that openings dipped under 7.2 million. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected closer to 7.4 million job openings.
JOLTS tracks job listings, hires and separations to give a snapshot of how strong or weak the employment picture looks across the country. When openings are high, it usually signals confidence among employers. When they fall sharply, it suggests hiring is slowing and opportunities are drying up.
This latest decline means&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4RlhWPr9zpiwGYcnBW90Ni/25a2720eeb230a16fa4ca122c3b99c49/SpencerH.png" alt="Spencer tweet" width="540px" />
That&rsquo;s a reversal from much of the past three years, when openings far exceeded job seekers and gave workers unusual leverage in the labor market.
&ldquo;This is a turning point for the labor market,&rdquo; says Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, in an interview at CNBC. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s yet another crack.&rdquo;
With fewer jobs to go around, expect the unemployment rate to rise in the months ahead. Upcoming jobless claims and Friday&rsquo;s payrolls report will offer the next test of whether this slowdown accelerates.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The ADP report today shows U.S. private employers added just 54,000 jobs in August, well below the 68,0000 economists expected. Meanwhile, initial jobless claims for the week ending Aug. 30 rose to 237,000, higher than the predicted 231,000.
<ul>
<li>The U.S. Composite PMI for August 2025 was revised down to 54.6, indicating the economy is still expanding, but at a slower pace compared to July&rsquo;s 55.1. This number measures the combined health of both the manufacturing and service sectors; any value above 50 shows growth, so 54.6 signals continued, though moderating, business activity.</li>
</ul>
Sneaking a peek at the stock market today, the three major U.S. indexes are all in the green &mdash; each up about 0.40%. At the time of writing, the Dow, S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq are sitting at 45,485, 6,475 and 21,580 respectively.
Guess the weak jobs data is bolstering market hopes for a rate cut come September&rsquo;s FOMC meeting&hellip;
Looking at commodities, oil&rsquo;s down almost 1% to $63.40 for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate. Likewise, precious metals are down: Gold&rsquo;s lost 0.65% to $3,611.10 per ounce, and silver&rsquo;s down 1.50% to $41.
Crypto&rsquo;s slumping as well. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 2.20%, just under $110,000; Ethereum, meanwhile, is down 3.80% to $4,300.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Longest Shot in D.C.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />After years pretending it was fine for lawmakers to gamble in the very casino they allegedly regulate, Congress might finally be ready to lock up the dice.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group unveiled the &ldquo;Restore Trust in Congress Act&rdquo; which would ban members of Congress, their spouses and dependent kids from owning or trading individual stocks.
Lawmakers would have 90&ndash;180 days to divest after being sworn in, and violators would pay a fine equal to 10% of the value of the trade &mdash; plus forfeit any profits.
As Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) puts it: &ldquo;It is crazy to the average person that this has been allowed to go on for so long.&rdquo; Why, yes, yes it is&hellip; But &ldquo;crazy&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t begin to cover it.
Here&rsquo;s why people are fed up: More than 100 members of Congress make around 10,000 stock trades every year, according to Capitol Trades and Unusual Whales. That&rsquo;s not dabbling &mdash; that&rsquo;s day-trading!
Plus, congresscritters tend to beat the market&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Hmm, it&rsquo;s almost as if voting on bills that move industries gives them an edge?!? And the trades haven&rsquo;t been subtle.
<ul>
<li>Nvidia was a favorite while Congress debated the CHIPS Act</li>
<li>Social media stocks got a workout during the TikTok ban talks</li>
<li>Defense shares moved while national security committees held hearings.</li>
</ul>
Some lawmakers, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), have racked up thousands of trades worth tens of millions of dollars, according to Capitol Trades data through July 2025&hellip;

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1d8SHVgnSHfV5WXIfk1vRH/32d020d890f9850018b614051ea64599/Table.png" alt="table" width="540px" />

Source: Capitol Trades (2025)
During the first seven months of 2025, in fact, lawmakers have already logged 7,810 trades covering 362 million shares &mdash; putting 2025 on track to set a new record.
While opponents argue banning stock trading would discourage &ldquo;private-sector talent&rdquo; from running for office, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) counters: &ldquo;If you want to trade stocks go to Wall Street. Don&rsquo;t go to Congress.&rdquo;
Indeed.
We&rsquo;ll see if Congress can pass this legislation. But betting against self-interest in Congress? That&rsquo;s the longest shot in D.C.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" /> Tesla Fever Cools (Sorta)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />South Korea&rsquo;s retail investors are backing away from Tesla (TSLA), cutting back their holdings as enthusiasm around the electric carmaker wanes.
According to Bloomberg calculations of depository data, Korean investors sold a net $657 million of Tesla shares in August &mdash; the largest monthly outflow since, at least, early 2019.
Even leveraged bets are falling out of favor. The Direxion Daily TSLA Bull 2X Shares ETF (TSLL), which provides double exposure to Tesla, saw $554 million in outflows last month.
It marks part of a broader four-month trend that has seen $1.8 billion pulled out of Tesla stock, signaling waning enthusiasm among one of the company&rsquo;s most steadfast global fan bases.
Instead, investors are chasing crypto companies, reflecting growing interest in cryptocurrencies at the expense of established U.S. tech giants
For instance, shares of Bitmine Immersion Technologies Inc., a stock viewed as a proxy for Ether, drew $253 million in net inflows last month.
&ldquo;Tesla used to offer a lot of inspiring narratives but it has failed to win people&rsquo;s hearts,&rdquo; says Han Jungsu, a 33-year-old investor who first bought Tesla stock in 2019 but sold out earlier this year.
Clearly, the company is winning drivers&rsquo; hearts&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6iZh9ajJ8YMfZxfAY9TjRc/2ca6b737d04dfb3337f1529061753018/Teslaconomics.png" alt="Teslaconomics" width="450px" />
Here&rsquo;s the buried lede: Despite the selling spree, Tesla remains the single most popular foreign stock among Korean retail investors. They still hold roughly $21.9 billion worth of shares &mdash; more than second-place Nvidia or third-place Palantir.
In other words, Korea&rsquo;s traders may be trimming their positions, but Tesla&rsquo;s grip on their portfolios (and parking garages?) remains strong.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Nostalgia: &ldquo;Super-Size It&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />McDonald&rsquo;s is going full time warp with the resurrection of its Extra Value Meals, hoping to lure budget-conscious diners back to the Golden Arches &mdash; one combo at a time. 
Rollout begins Sept. 8, and these combos promise 15% off compared to ordering individual menu items, covering breakfast, lunch or dinner: $5 for a Sausage McMuffin With Egg with hash brown and coffee; $8 for the Big Mac deal, fries and a drink included.
Naturally, prices like these are gone for good&hellip;

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4CEgHT4Bp6RFJjWusZGkG1/d83fa261df695e916320bccb7f1a64c1/ValueMeal.png" alt="value meal" width="450px" />

Courtesy: Reddit Remember when a full meal cost less than a Starbucks coffee?
Why the throwback? With prices marching ever skyward, CEO Chris Kempczinski admits some regulars no longer see McDonald&rsquo;s as a bargain. Thus its value menu reboot, with hopes of reversing sliding sales among price-sensitive fans.
&ldquo;Extra Value Meals are an integral part of what McDonald&rsquo;s represents,&rdquo; Kempczinski tells CNBC, reminding folks of a time when ordering a combo by number actually felt like a deal.
Eight combos will make the cut, from classics like the Quarter Pounder and 10-piece Chicken McNuggets meals to revamped breakfast items. The deals last through the end of 2025 &mdash; unless McDonald&rsquo;s pulls the plug earlier (no guarantees from corporate yet).
For now, it&rsquo;s a &ldquo;No. 3&rdquo; for me &mdash; hold (some of) the regret.
We&rsquo;ll be back Friday!
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/emily-clancy.png" alt="Emily Clancy" width="250px" align="left" />
Emily Clancy Associate editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

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Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

For a small audio chipmaker, Apple’s endorsement proves seismic… 

About Apple’s Next Big Reveal

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Silver&rsquo;s &ldquo;Critical&rdquo; Condition
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Back in the mid-2010s, lithium was a footnote in chemistry labs and the dreams of early Tesla enthusiasts. Uranium, after Fukushima, was considered dead weight in the energy world. 
Yet when Washington put both metals on its official Critical Minerals List, fortunes flipped almost overnight. Now another metal is poised for its own breakout moment: silver.
As Paradigm editor Chris Campbell notes: &ldquo;Silver just jumped from the kids&rsquo; table to the head of the banquet.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s because, for the first time in history, the U.S. Department of the Interior has proposed adding silver to its Critical Minerals List draft for 2025.
The decision isn&rsquo;t final &mdash; there&rsquo;s a 30-day comment period before the list is locked-in &mdash; but the signal is clear. The world&rsquo;s largest economy just declared that without silver, its future could be at risk.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> History shows what happens when a commodity makes the government&rsquo;s list. 
Uranium spent most of the 2010s languishing around $25 a pound. Then, in 2018, it quietly won a spot on the Critical Minerals List.
By 2020, the Department of Energy was pushing for a national reserve, and by 2022, the Defense Production Act was backing the entire nuclear fuel supply chain. The mantra shifted from &ldquo;cheap supply&rdquo; to &ldquo;secure supply.&rdquo; Prices followed, surging past $100 a pound by 2024.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/li">Lithium&rsquo;s story</a> is even more explosive. In 2018, lithium carbonate sold for about $7,000 a ton. Once designated critical, automakers inked long-term contracts, subsidies poured in and prices skyrocketed to $80,000 a ton by late 2022.
Even after cooling, lithium still trades at multiples of its old price. The designation &ldquo;didn&rsquo;t just nudge lithium higher,&rdquo; says Chris, &ldquo;it rewired the entire supply chain.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;The [silver] designation just shines a spotlight on a fire already ablaze,&rdquo; Chris adds.
Silver, for instance, doesn&rsquo;t sit idle. It gets consumed in solar panels, electric vehicles, semiconductors and medical devices, making it both an industrial backbone and a monetary hedge.
And the numbers are striking. Global demand in 2024 was about 1.16 billion ounces, while mine supply lagged at just 820 million.
That marks the fourth-straight year of deficits, with aboveground stocks covering only two&ndash;three years at current demand. Much of that supply is locked in exchange-traded funds or private vaults.
What happens if silver makes the final list?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The playbook&rsquo;s already written: Demand surges instantly, while supply takes years to adjust. 
That&rsquo;s why uranium quadrupled and lithium went tenfold, Chris explains. With silver&rsquo;s fragmented supply chain and chronic deficits, the move could be even sharper.
Big players are already circling&hellip;
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Tech billionaire David Bateman recently took delivery of 12.7 million ounces,&rdquo; says Chris, &ldquo;about 1.5% of global annual production</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s central bank disclosed a $40 million ETF position.&rdquo; In most commodities, those figures are minor. In silver, they&rsquo;re enough to move the needle.</li>
</ul>
Washington doesn&rsquo;t add minerals to its list lightly. &ldquo;It runs thousands of disruption models across industries &mdash; energy, defense, health, technology &mdash; and only elevates commodities where shortages could break the system.&rdquo;
<a id="2"></a>
If silver makes the cut, it will be a recognition of reality. &ldquo;Ultimately, silver doesn&rsquo;t need Washington&rsquo;s blessing,&rdquo; Chris concludes.
Silver&rsquo;s already scarce. The designation would simply make it official.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />De-Dollarization in Action
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Central banks have been rewriting the playbook for global reserves. Over the past three years, they have purchased gold at near-record levels. 
In 2022 alone, net purchases reached 1,136 tonnes &mdash; the highest on record since 1950. (For context, between 2010 and 2021, average annual purchases were only 473 tonnes.) Last year ranked as the third-largest expansion ever, just 6.2 tonnes shy of 2023.
At the same time, the dollar&rsquo;s grip on world finance is loosening. Dollars accounted for just 57.8% of global reserves at the end of last year &mdash; the lowest share since 1994 and down sharply from 72% in 2002.
That decline is more than a currency story. It shows up most clearly in sagging foreign demand for U.S. Treasuries&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1hVbsAol5lNDbEBBeKHy7J/761fb597d73b684f4a82df4eaaecf58f/Otavio.png" alt="otavio tweet" width="540px" />
For decades, Treasuries have been the anchor of central bank reserves, absorbing America&rsquo;s borrowing needs. But as central banks diversify into gold and other assets, fewer dollars are recycled into U.S. debt.
JPMorgan notes that central banks&rsquo; preference for gold is helping fuel the current bull market, with prices forecast to approach $4,000 an ounce by mid-2026.
Meanwhile, with the national debt now surpassing $37 trillion, investors are questioning whether Washington has stretched its &ldquo;reserve currency privilege&rdquo; too far.
To be clear, the dollar isn&rsquo;t on the verge of collapse. But even modest de-dollarization could strain America&rsquo;s ability to borrow, spend and manage deficits. For now, gold is quietly rewriting the rules of global finance.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />NVDA = &ldquo;Backbone&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Everything is sold out,&rdquo; says Paradigm editor Davis Wilson at our sister e-letter The Million Mission. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the reality of Nvidia&rsquo;s business right now.&rdquo;
To wit, Nvidia&rsquo;s H100 and H200 chips are backordered. Its latest Blackwell processors can&rsquo;t be manufactured fast enough. Demand is so overwhelming that cloud giants are renting server capacity to one another to fill gaps.
Despite this, skeptics &mdash; including Paradigm&rsquo;s trading pro Enrique Abeyta &mdash; see Nvidia as a <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/caveat-emptor1">bubble.</a> (Enrique makes a compelling argument; we don&rsquo;t hold to party lines around here.)
&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve been saying it for quarter after quarter,&rdquo; Davis observes. &ldquo;And they&rsquo;ve been wrong every time.&rdquo; Nvidia&rsquo;s story isn&rsquo;t about chasing one earnings beat. It&rsquo;s about positioning for the largest technology buildout of the century.
At first glance, he notes, Nvidia&rsquo;s $180 stock price looks lofty. Shares are up 12-fold since ChatGPT launched in late 2022. But earnings have grown even faster &mdash; up 17x in the same period.
&ldquo;Over the last 90 days,&rdquo; says Davis, &ldquo;expectations for this year&rsquo;s EPS jumped from $4.27 to $4.45. Next year&rsquo;s numbers rose even more &mdash; from $5.73 to $6.18.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;When NVDA fundamentals are rising this fast, the stock is actually getting cheaper,&rdquo; Davis adds.
Not only that, Nvidia&rsquo;s CEO Jensen Huang more than tripled his recent forecast for AI infrastructure spending &mdash; from $1 trillion to as much as $3&ndash;4 trillion by 2030.
Today&rsquo;s focus on training AI models is only the first wave, Huang claims. Next comes inference, where those models are deployed at scale.
Beyond that? Robotics and autonomous systems &mdash; what Huang calls &ldquo;physical AI&rdquo; &mdash; which require exponentially more compute. With that, Wedbush analysts estimate demand for Nvidia&rsquo;s newest chips could exceed supply by 10-to-1.
And if U.S. restrictions ease, the Chinese market could represent $50 billion in annual sales, with the potential to grow 50% annually thereafter. &ldquo;That would be rocket fuel on top of an already unstoppable story,&rdquo; says Davis.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-ultimate-white-house-insider#2">&ldquo;Nvidia&rsquo;s earnings</a> once again proved the skeptics wrong,&rdquo; he concludes. &ldquo;Yes, the stock traded flat after the announcement. But underneath the surface, the setup keeps getting better.
&ldquo;Earnings estimates are rising. Growth prospects are accelerating. And a potential China reentry looms as a massive bonus.
&ldquo;This is not a bubble stock waiting to crash. It&rsquo;s the backbone of a once-in-a-generation technology shift,&rdquo; Davis emphasizes. &ldquo;Own it&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> NVDA shares have pulled back slightly today, but one of its Mag 7 companions is catching a bid&hellip; 
Namely, Alphabet (Google) dodged the harshest outcome in its antitrust case after a federal judge refused to force the sale of Chrome. Instead, Judge Amit Mehta banned the company from signing exclusive distribution deals for Search, Chrome, Gemini and Assistant.
Google can continue paying partners like Apple to set its products as defaults &mdash; a deal that nets Apple about $20 billion a year &mdash; but contracts must be nonexclusive and short-term. Mehta also ordered Google to share its search results with qualified competitors. The ruling preserves Apple&rsquo;s cash flow while boosting its leverage in future talks. At the time of writing, GOOG shares are up 8.5%.
Taking a look at the rest of the market today, the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up almost 1% to 21,465 while the S&amp;P 500 is up 0.30% to 5,435. At the same time, the Dow&rsquo;s down 0.35% to 45,140.
Surveying commodities, oil is down 2.50% to $63.90 for a barrel of WTI. Precious metals? Gold and silver are both up about 1% to $3,627.20 per ounce and $41.50 respectively.
Finally, the crypto market is in the green. Bitcoin&rsquo;s up 1.40% to $112,200 while Ethereum&rsquo;s up over 4.70% to $4,475.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Emergency in Name Only?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Though details are murky, the Trump administration is floating the idea of declaring a &ldquo;housing emergency&rdquo; this fall. 
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells the Washington Examiner: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re trying to figure out what we can do,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;and we don&rsquo;t want to step into the business of states, counties and municipal governments.&rdquo;
Emergency status, however, typically demands swift action to protect 1) life and 2) property. What&rsquo;s being discussed here looks more like a possible policy shortcut &mdash; an attempt to bypass the normal legislative process by invoking emergency powers.
Still, the housing market does face real pressures. Excessive zoning rules and overregulation have driven up prices and limited supply. Yet Bessent&rsquo;s comments suggest the administration isn&rsquo;t prepared to tie federal dollars to zoning reforms.
In fact, according to an article at Reason, the White House proposes eliminating the Pathways to Removing Obstacles (PRO) to Housing program, a small federal grant designed to nudge cities and states toward easing restrictive zoning and permitting rules. (The administration argues the initiative has been &ldquo;hijacked for woke purposes.&rdquo;)
Meanwhile, one realistic option could be freeing up federal lands for housing &mdash; though that would likely face lawsuits from environmental groups. Also meanwhile? Trump-backed tariffs, including hikes on Canadian lumber and imported steel, only raise construction costs.
At best, a declared &ldquo;housing emergency&rdquo; could spark debate and push state and local governments to act. But unless paired with concrete reforms, it risks being little more than political theater.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Caribbean AI and Arm Wrestling
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />When the Caribbean island of Anguilla was handed the two-letter internet domain .ai back in the 1980s, nobody thought much of it. 
After all, the island had more pressing concerns: sun-seeking tourists, looming hurricanes and making sure coconuts outnumbered people (they still do). Fast-forward to 2025 and those two letters have turned into a gold mine.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/60vFyTkpoWyyBgJ6Kz3lZI/d87aa3912aa8822ac147dabffe9114ca/Anguilla.png" alt="Anguilla" width="540px" />
With artificial intelligence now the hottest acronym on the planet, tech firms and entrepreneurs are clamoring for .ai website addresses.
Over 850,000 such domains now exist &mdash; up from fewer than 50,000 in 2020. Some sell for eye-watering sums: U.S. tech executive Dharmesh Shah, for instance, reportedly dropped $700,000 on you.ai earlier this year, betting that his idea for digital &ldquo;clones&rdquo; of people needed the perfect web home.
This isn&rsquo;t the first time a small island struck digital gold. Tuvalu famously cashed in on its .tv domain about 20 years ago, licensing it to streaming services and broadcasters worldwide.
In Anguilla, the AI boom has transformed the island&rsquo;s budget. In 2024, the government earned $39 million from .ai sales, nearly a quarter of its total revenue &mdash; second only to tourism. Officials project those revenues will keep climbing, with $49 million expected this year.
That&rsquo;s a big deal for an island of just 16,000 residents, where tourism accounts for 37% of income but remains at the mercy of hurricane season.
To safeguard the digital windfall, Anguilla has struck a five-year deal with U.S. firm Identity Digital to host domains on global servers, ensuring that a storm knocking out power lines won&rsquo;t also knock out profits.
Turns out the speck of an island&rsquo;s most lucrative resource isn&rsquo;t its crop of coconuts or its beautiful beaches. It&rsquo;s two tiny letters.
And Anguilla didn&rsquo;t even have to arm wrestle for them&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Subaru missed a golden opportunity with <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/tariffs-on-trial#4">Starlink,&rdquo;</a> writes a longtime reader &mdash; with a callback to &ldquo;Malice in Dallas&rdquo; circa 1992.
&ldquo;I recall Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher arm wrestling a CEO for the use of the phrase &lsquo;Just Plane Smart.&rsquo; Another airline had used the slogan first, and their CEO was an arm wrestling enthusiast. Herb turned the whole thing into a fun PR moment for both companies.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/52CxgooID472SRFyRULpbm/102134bc87bf00ef94f475bc0c06d5ac/SouthwestCeo.png" alt="Southwest CEO" width="450px" />

Courtesy: Southwest50.com Colorful Southwest CEO Herb Kelleher was indeed&hellip; &ldquo;Over the Top.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Subaru could have generated massive publicity,&rdquo; he adds, &ldquo;with a challenge that Musk would not have turned down.&rdquo;
Thanks, reader, for the entertaining detour&hellip; We&rsquo;ll be back tomorrow with a fresh round of 5 Bullets. 
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/emily-clancy.png" alt="Emily Clancy" width="250px" align="left" />
Emily Clancy Associate editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

critical-mineral

For the first time in history, the U.S. Department of the Interior has proposed adding silver to its Critical Minerals List draft for 2025. 

You Should Own More Silver

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Tariffs to the Supreme Court
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Who says nothing happens over a long holiday weekend?
Much to catch up on this morning. Let&rsquo;s go&hellip;
Not long after we hit &ldquo;send&rdquo; on Friday afternoon, a federal appeals court rejected Donald Trump&rsquo;s tariff regime &mdash; a decision that came as no surprise if you saw <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/unconstitutional">our May 9 edition</a>.
The panel by and large accepted the arguments brought by a group of small businesses and several state attorneys general &mdash; that Trump stretched the meaning of &ldquo;economic emergency&rdquo; beyond the breaking point, far beyond the language of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.
However&hellip; the judges left the tariffs in place so that the Trump administration can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Handicapping a Supreme Court ruling is always a dicey affair &mdash; but given the high stakes, it&rsquo;s worth a couple of paragraphs this morning.
&ldquo;Across three different courts, 15 judges have weighed Trump&rsquo;s tariff maneuvers,&rdquo; writes The Wall Street Journal&rsquo;s Supreme Court reporter Jess Bravin &mdash; &ldquo;and 11 of them, appointed by presidents of both parties, have found he acted without legal support.&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s conceivable the Supreme Court&rsquo;s conservative majority will rule likewise.
&ldquo;Central to the case could be the &lsquo;major questions doctrine,&rsquo; a term the Supreme Court coined for expansive presidential policies the justices feel go beyond what lawmakers had in mind when adopting broadly written statutes,&rdquo; Bravin writes.
In recent years, the court has cited the major questions doctrine in striking down an Obama-era plan to curb carbon emissions as well as the Biden administration&rsquo;s student-loan forgiveness scheme.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But Paradigm&rsquo;s macro maven Jim Rickards &mdash; drawing on his experience as a Wall Street lawyer &mdash; will take the other side of that trade.
As he sees it, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act &ldquo;gives the president near-dictatorial powers in economic affairs&rdquo; &mdash; with two provisos.
&ldquo;The issue at hand must involve a national security emergency and there must be an international aspect to the emergency.
&ldquo;In a globally connected world with market crises always a possibility, these predicates are easy to meet. Obama and Biden used IEEPA hundreds of times without objection.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s true the statute does not use the word &lsquo;tariffs&rsquo; but so what? It doesn&rsquo;t use the word &lsquo;oil&rsquo; either and the U.S. has applied hundreds of sanctions aimed at Russian oil using IEEPA.&rdquo;
The timetable, you wonder? Washington insiders figure the Supreme Court won&rsquo;t decide whether to take up the case until December or January &mdash; which would push oral arguments to March or April.
Once more we&rsquo;ll pose a question we posed earlier this summer: If the court strikes down the tariffs as unconstitutional, will the U.S. Treasury have to issue refunds?
On to the next big thing from the holiday weekend &mdash; and we&rsquo;ll preface it by saying while Jim likes tariffs as a means to smooth over trade imbalances, he does not like them as an instrument of economic warfare&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Dragon, the Elephant and the Bear
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Jim Rickards went semi-viral on X over the weekend with this post&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5ndeItOe3fnMesqFJpu8Gq/c365848e139d5e1f556f2f1bd29ddd61/JamesR.png" alt="james tweet" width="540px" />
That&rsquo;s Russian President Vladimir Putin, meeting in China this weekend with India&rsquo;s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
First, a reminder of the background: As we&rsquo;ve related through much of the summer, the Trump administration has slapped a 25% tariff on India &mdash; punishment for India&rsquo;s purchases of oil from Russia.
This is on top of an existing 25% &ldquo;reciprocal&rdquo; tariff. So India is now subject to one of the highest U.S. tariff rates in the world.
The idea was to make India cry Uncle and stop buying Russian oil and &ldquo;funding Putin&rsquo;s war machine,&rdquo; as Trump adviser Peter Navarro put it in the Financial Times.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> We said all summer it wouldn&rsquo;t work &mdash; which brings us to this weekend&rsquo;s gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tianjin, China.
Russia and China formed the SCO in 2001 as something of a &ldquo;counterweight&rdquo; to the Western NATO alliance; your editor has been writing about it periodically since 2006. Today its members number 10; India attained full membership in 2017.
Skeptics have argued for years that the SCO is marked more by its differences than its commonalities. In particular, India and China have an unresolved border dispute that erupted into a full-on war in 1962 &mdash; nearly rekindling in 2020.
But as Jim Rickards wrote to a select group of readers on the eve of the summit Friday, &ldquo;Trump&rsquo;s weaponization of trade has created a new dynamic within the SCO. The imposition of punitive tariffs might see the organization&rsquo;s most powerful countries &mdash; China, Russia and India &mdash; align more closely against the U.S.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> And as you see from the photo above, that&rsquo;s exactly how events played out. 
Modi and Putin met one-on-one &mdash; after which Modi said the two discussed &ldquo;ways to deepen bilateral cooperation in all spheres, including trade, fertilizers, space, security and culture.&rdquo;
Meanwhile during the summit itself, China&rsquo;s Xi emphasized cooperation with India &mdash; rivalry notwithstanding.
"The world is going toward transformation,&rdquo; said Xi. &ldquo;China and India are two of the most civilized countries. We are the world's two most populous countries and part of the Global South... It is vital to be friends, a good neighbor, and the Dragon and the Elephant to come together.&rdquo;
And there&rsquo;s more: At the summit&rsquo;s conclusion, the SCO issued a statement condemning the recent U.S.-Israeli war on Iran &mdash; which is also an SCO member.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> You&rsquo;d think American leaders would take India more seriously. Actually, American leaders once did.
Former State Department adviser James Carden says there was a time when the position of U.S. ambassador to India often went to someone of stature.
&ldquo;During the Cold War,&rdquo; Carden writes, &ldquo;it was a particularly sensitive post given India&rsquo;s role as a leader of the nonaligned bloc &mdash; in other words, those countries that refused either Washington&rsquo;s or Moscow&rsquo;s tutelage.&rdquo;
JFK gave the position to the Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Republican Richard Nixon gave it to Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan &mdash; who went on to a lengthy stint in the U.S. Senate, respected on both sides of the aisle. George H.W. Bush gave the post to Thomas Pickering &mdash; who&rsquo;d already been U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Nowadays? &ldquo;For reasons that remain obscure,&rdquo; Carden writes, Joe Biden gave the post to &ldquo;the nepo-mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti,&rdquo; And Trump has nominated Sergio Gor &mdash; described by Carden as &ldquo;a 38-year-old native of Malta with zero diplomatic or foreign affairs experience (but, as it happens, ample experience as an amateur wedding DJ).&rdquo;
Presumably those sorts of disses haven&rsquo;t gone unnoticed in New Delhi. Just sayin&rsquo;...
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />September Sell-Off
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The mainstream has settled into a strange narrative as a new trading month begins&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/VrQdDfHGc2EM7KOyY7t2V/0dbfa3386386a4d961d9dde269b6d045/Bloomberg_FT.png" alt="bloomberg and FT" width="540px" />
The Financial Times speaks of &ldquo;pressure on U.S. Treasuries and other government debt, partly due to investors&rsquo; worries about rising debt piles in many major economies.&rdquo;
The FT also quotes the head of stock research at State Street, saying, &ldquo;The risk-off sentiment today is broader market unease stemming from the bond market.&rdquo;
Which begs the question: Why now?
For years, the United States has had a debt-to-GDP ratio that puts it in such high-debt company as Japan, Greece and Italy. The debt outlook isn&rsquo;t so hot in Europe, either &mdash; certainly not in Germany, France or the U.K.
In any event, U.S. Treasuries are indeed selling off today &mdash; pushing interest rates higher. At last check the yield on a 10-year T-note is 4.27% &mdash; up from under 4.23% on Friday. That&rsquo;s a big move in the bond world.
As for stocks, the S&amp;P 500 has shed 1.2% as we write &mdash; sitting at 6,382. The Dow is holding up a little better, but the Nasdaq is down over 1.4%.
In electronic trading yesterday, gold pushed past $3,500 and silver over $41. Both have pulled back since &mdash; but silver is still holding the line on $40, a level last seen in 2011.
<blockquote>➢ One economic number of note: The August ISM Manufacturing Index rings in at 48.7 &mdash; right in line with Wall Street&rsquo;s expectations. Any number below 50 suggests a shrinking factory sector &mdash; and except for two months last winter, the index has been mired under 50 since late 2022.</blockquote>
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> A quick postscript to the inflation number chronicled here on Friday&hellip;
We mentioned how &ldquo;core PCE&rdquo; &mdash; the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s preferred measure of inflation &mdash; is running 2.9% year-over-year.
We also mentioned how this number has been stuck in a range between 2.6&ndash;3.0% for the last 18 months &mdash; nowhere near the Fed&rsquo;s 2% inflation target.
But sometimes you need a good visual to put it all in perspective &mdash; and author Larry McDonald either found or created an outstanding one, going back to the mid-1990s.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3HgL77fyXvm6alRpFm43Ip/9d77485eeab19951bb01a2e72dab364e/Lawrence.png" alt="lawrence tweet" width="540px" />
<a id="4"></a>
Which reinforces something we&rsquo;ve been saying <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/declare-your-independence-from-inflation">for over two years now</a>: The track record in developed economies shows that whenever inflation sails past 5% &mdash; as it did in 2022 &mdash; it typically takes a decade or longer to get back to &ldquo;normal&rdquo; 2% inflation.
Plan accordingly. Precious metals and other natural resources thrived during the inflationary 1970s and they&rsquo;re thriving again&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Starlink: What&rsquo;s in a (Brand) Name?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />It seems Elon Musk did not have dibs on the Starlink name when he began launching his mini-satellites for worldwide internet access a few years ago.
Your editor is taking delivery today on a new Subaru Outback &mdash; reliable wintertime transport to replace a 2004 Chevy TrailBlazer that croaked without warning last year.
Among the blizzard of welcome emails I got was one with &ldquo;Starlink_Subscriptions&rdquo; in the from line.
Ugh, I thought &mdash; probably some trial subscription that I&rsquo;m going to have to jump through a bunch of hoops to cancel.
But no: The Perplexity AI engine tells me Subaru adopted the name Starlink no later than 2013 for its &ldquo;vehicle connectivity and infotainment technology.&rdquo; The name emerged from the stars in Subaru&rsquo;s logo. (&ldquo;Subaru&rdquo; is Japanese for &ldquo;Pleiades,&rdquo; as it turns out. Now you know.)
Musk&rsquo;s SpaceX didn&rsquo;t adopt the Starlink name until sometime around 2019.
Yet Subaru never took Musk to court. Why is an object of much internet speculation. Too costly for Subaru? Not a viable case given that the companies operate in different industries? A quiet settlement before it ever got to court?
In any event, Musk&rsquo;s perceived dominance of the name is such that this year, Subaru ditched it in favor of a mouthful called &ldquo;MySubaru Connected Services.&rdquo; Here&rsquo;s a screengrab from Reddit&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7vYA6q7yHKXBEXSWp5TFBs/aa1e70919f6c924988da4dac3269bb91/MySubaru.png" alt="my subaru" width="540px" />
Clearly the transition isn&rsquo;t complete, given my momentary confusion when something from &ldquo;Starlink&rdquo; landed in my inbox.
Anyway, score one for Musk&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Perceptions, Reality and Lisa Cook
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> On the subject of Donald Trump <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-lisa-cook-gold-trade">attempting to oust Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve</a>, a reader writes&hellip;
&ldquo;Gonigam&rsquo;s comment that &lsquo;perceptions matter more than reality&rsquo; is a crock. Probably a good lead magnet in his article for the braindead, but still a crock.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Huh?!
In the first place, perception frequently matters more than reality in markets.
For much of the last three years you could make the case that Nvidia shares were overvalued. And by any objective measure, that was the reality. But it didn&rsquo;t matter; perceptions were such that people were willing to pay an ever-richer price for those shares regardless.
&ldquo;Price is truth,&rdquo; as our trading pro Enrique Abeyta regularly reminds his readers. The price might be grounded in a BS narrative, but the price is the price. You can&rsquo;t argue with the price; you might as well bark at the moon.
Of course, perceptions can change &mdash; and then the price will likely change, too.
Anyway, I&rsquo;m not sure why you&rsquo;re taking so much exception to this truism in the context of the Lisa Cook story.
By any objective measure, the dollar is trash and U.S. Treasuries are toast &mdash; and have been for a long time. But that&rsquo;s not been the perception; indeed until maybe three years ago the perception was that U.S. Treasuries are the safest investment on the planet.
Conceivably that perception will change if Trump succeeds in pushing out Cook, undermining the current perception that the Fed operates independently of whoever is president at the time.
Didn&rsquo;t strike me as an especially edgy thing to say. But you never know what&rsquo;s gonna trigger someone nowadays&hellip;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Trump-Emergency

Not long after we hit “send” on Friday afternoon, a federal appeals court rejected Donald Trump’s tariff regime. 

Tariffs on Trial

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Trump&rsquo;s Tariffs, Modi&rsquo;s Gold
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Washington&rsquo;s latest squeeze play on India looks less like strategy and more like self-sabotage. 
The Trump administration slapped 25% tariffs on Indian goods earlier this summer, then doubled down with a 50% hit when New Delhi refused to cut back on Russian oil imports.
The result? India didn&rsquo;t fold. It doubled down too &mdash; buying more discounted crude, shifting more of its reserves into gold and trimming U.S. Treasury holdings by about $15 billion over the past year.
That gold bet is no token move. India&rsquo;s reserves climbed from 840.76 tonnes in mid-2024 to nearly 880 tonnes this year. At a time when the U.S. needs loyal buyers of its debt, one of the biggest emerging economies is swapping Treasuries for bullion.
India&rsquo;s reallocation mirrors <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/you-should-own-more-silver#2">dynamics</a> we mentioned earlier this week: Central banks diversifying away from dollar-denominated assets and reducing exposure to Washington&rsquo;s risky spending and debt issues.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Instead of isolating India, American pressure is pushing it closer to the very rivals D.C. worries about most.
Days ago, Prime Minister Modi shared a warm handshake with Xi Jinping &mdash; which is hugely significant considering the long-standing <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/dollar-earthquake">bad blood</a> between India and China.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7FznndQBtGzQAhHzIhtAP6/93641462b8227fed655873b29f8a6d8c/Narendra.png" alt="Narendra" width="540px" />
Add to that India&rsquo;s deepening energy ties with Russia and its growing influence inside the BRICS bloc, and the picture is clear: The more Washington tariffs/sanctions the largest democracy in the world, the more New Delhi hedges.
We&rsquo;ll give the last word to one of our astute readers, who snarks: &ldquo;Maybe Trump will earn a Nobel Peace Prize after all&hellip;
&ldquo;Mending relations between India and China is no small feat! Not to mention bringing together so many nations in the BRICS alliance for the purpose of financial sovereignty.
&ldquo;Only shame is what pulling that off is going to cost America and Americans.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Stupid BLS Tricks?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) drew attention this morning when it flaggedissues that threatened to delay or disrupt its August jobs report &mdash; one of the most closely watched government economic releases.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1zCCEpJm9lw6K8wnMSKOfM/3d5229641a82be55dd5e98aba1ab769a/Sorry.png" alt="sorry" width="350px" />
Such hiccups are rare, but fuel speculation about the reliability of the data, especially after major downward revisions and questionable survey response rates in recent months.
In fact, the BLS reports responses to its Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey, which produces the monthly jobs report, has declined significantly since 2020, falling from 60% to around 40% in 2024&ndash;2025.
With fewer responses, the bureau relies more on statistical models (yikes), perhaps exemplified by the recent downward revisions of 258,000 combined jobs in May and June &mdash; a scale not seen since 1968.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Labor Market Loses Heat
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The U.S. economy barely moved the needle in August, adding just 22,000 jobs. Economists indicate the country needs to add roughly 100,000&ndash;150,000 jobs per month to keep pace with population growth.
Strikingly, June&rsquo;s numbers were revised downward to show a 13,000 job loss &mdash; the first such negative monthly decline since December 2020.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5YPiFx9ECjcxMCODGQhRJj/d9734f4173e8956147d6934c791533c2/Jobs.png" alt="jobs" width="540px" />

Source: BLS, The Guardian
The only sector with notable gains was health care, which added 31,000 jobs. However, these gains were offset by declines in federal government employment (down 15,000 in August, 97,000 since January) and manufacturing (basically flat in August, but down 78,000 year-to-date).
The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%, its highest level since 2021. The labor market is clearly cooling under the chill of &mdash; take your pick &mdash; Trump&rsquo;s tariffs? Corporate belt-tightening? Automation and AI?
Markets now see the odds of a Federal Reserve quarter-point rate cut in September above 80% as the weak jobs report signals the U.S. labor market is softening fast.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Predictably, stocks are sliding today &mdash; with the three major U.S. indexes entrenched in the red. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is faring best, down 0.15% to 21,670. On the other end of the spectrum, the Big Board&rsquo;s lost 0.60% to 45,365 while the S&amp;P 500 is stuck in the middle: down 0.45% to 6,475.
Surveying the commodities complex, the price of oil&rsquo;s sliding bigly &mdash; down 3% to $61.55 for a barrel of WTI. (More on that in a moment.) But it&rsquo;s a banner day for precious metals. Gold&rsquo;s setting a fresh record, up 1.25% to $3,651.80 per ounce, and silver&rsquo;s up 0.50%, hanging onto $41.60.
<ul>
<li>Treasury yields, across the board, are slumping with the 10-year note dropping more than 9 basis points to 4.08%, its lowest point since early April. The 2-year yield has fallen even further, down over 11 basis points to 3.48%. Meanwhile, the 30-year bond slipped today more than 8 basis points to 4.79%.</li>
</ul>
Finally, we have some crypto news to report: Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, is exploring investments beyond its traditional holdings by entering the gold sector. The company is in talks with groups across the gold supply chain &mdash; including miners, refiners and royalty firms &mdash; as a way to diversify.
Tether already holds $8.7 billion worth of physical gold bars, which it keeps in Zurich vaults. In June 2025, Tether invested $105 million to buy a minority stake in Elemental Altus Royalties, a company that earns income from gold mining projects. When Elemental Altus merged with another royalties firm, EMX, Tether committed another $100 million as part of that deal.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino described gold as &ldquo;bitcoin in nature&rdquo; during a speech at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in May. (An anonymous mining exec, heh, describes Tether as &ldquo;the weirdest company I have ever dealt with.&rdquo;)
In terms of the crypto market? Flagship crypto Bitcoin is up 0.85%, just under $111K, and Ethereum&rsquo;s up 0.50% to $4,300.&nbsp;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />An Energy COP-Out
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Yesterday, ConocoPhillips (COP) announced plans to cut 20&ndash;25% of its workforce &mdash; about 3,000 jobs &mdash; prompted by rising costs and lackluster oil prices. 
Most layoffs will hit before the end of the year, with CEO Ryan Lance telling staff that &ldquo;fewer roles&rdquo; are needed as the company seeks efficiency in a tough market. COP shares immediately sank 4% on the news, capping a near-14% drop from a year ago.
The mass layoffs at ConocoPhillips reflect the larger trend unfolding across the U.S. labor market as hiring slows and companies, especially in energy, trim their sails. BP, Chevron and oil field services giant SLB all rolled out job cuts earlier this year in response to similar pressures: sagging demand, price volatility and post-pandemic inflation.
&ldquo;From the demand side, where I&rsquo;m arguing from, the International Energy Agency (IEA) notes that demand is expected to decelerate for the remainder of 2025, following a strong first quarter, due to weaker economic activity worldwide,&rdquo; editor Sean Ring notes.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Trade tensions, especially the imposition of tariffs by the U.S. and retaliatory measures by other countries, are dampening economic growth and, consequently, oil demand.
&ldquo;The recent de-escalation of Middle East tensions &mdash; such as the ceasefire between Iran and Israel &mdash; has removed the risk premium from oil prices, contributing to the decline in prices,&rdquo; he concludes.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Yes, oil prices are low. This means that it&rsquo;s cheaper now (!) to acquire acreage. To do geophysics. Early-phase exploration. And be prepared for the inevitable upswing,&rdquo; says Paradigm editor and geologist Byron King, taking up the other side of the argument.
&ldquo;There is no &lsquo;energy transition.&rsquo; Only energy addition,&rdquo; he continues. &ldquo;Did ConocoPhillips management buy into the idea that oil is a terminal industry? That the world will mirror California-scale idiocy?
&ldquo;COP management must not be very good. They are in the phase of corporate life when the operation is run by accountants and lawyers, although not (yet) the bankruptcy lawyers.
&ldquo;If management hates the workforce so much, then management should resign. This is not a problem caused by &lsquo;too many people,&rsquo; although there are always some no-loads in every big organization.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s more like management is out of ideas (if they ever had any). Maybe COP should self-liquidate. Sell off its assets to other companies with more ambition.&nbsp;
&ldquo;As for drill, baby, drill? Trump is in a tough spot,&rdquo; Byron concedes. &ldquo;Facile campaign slogan meets geologic reality.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Zuck Meets His Match
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Imagine being punished for your name. That&rsquo;s the predicament of Indiana bankruptcy attorney Mark S. Zuckerberg &mdash; who happens to share a name with the billionaire founder of Facebook, Mark E. Zuckerberg.
For eight years, the attorney&rsquo;s social media account has been flipped on and off in the manner of a toddler playing with a light switch. Each time, Meta accuses him of &ldquo;impersonating a celebrity.&rdquo; Each time, he swears he isn&rsquo;t. After all, Mr. Zuckerberg&rsquo;s been practicing law since young Zuck was in elementary school.

<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7CP9xCsvCrlPcTAl6bwk9e/49988059d8ce3dcdb0048d0b56b8d673/Mark.png" alt="mark" width="450px" />

Courtesy: Mark S. Zuckerberg
The older Mark insists this is no laughing matter. He claims repeat suspensions have cost him thousands in lost business, not to mention the $11,000 he shelled out for ads that were unceremoniously yanked. He compares it to buying a billboard &mdash; only to have Meta shroud it with a blanket.
Acknowledging the error, Meta has restored his account. But only after he filed a lawsuit.
So Mark Zuckerberg had to sue Facebook&hellip; for alleging he was pretending to be Mark Zuckerberg.
Turns out, the only thing worse than having the same name as a billionaire is proving you&rsquo;re not him.
Take care, reader! Enjoy your weekend, and don&rsquo;t forget to check out Saturday&rsquo;s Gavin Newsom-centric highlights issue.
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/emily-clancy.png" alt="Emily Clancy" width="250px" align="left" />
Emily Clancy Associate editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

GoldBars2

Washington’s latest squeeze play on India looks less like strategy and more like self-sabotage. 

India’s Not Blinking 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Lisa Cook Gold Trade
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The mainstream is picking up on something we&rsquo;ve been telling you since Tuesday.
Donald Trump&rsquo;s efforts to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook are &ldquo;potentially undermining confidence in the U.S. dollar and Treasury bonds &mdash; and boosting the appeal of gold and other assets perceived as safe havens,&rdquo; writes Myra Saefong at MarketWatch.
Ms. Saefong interviews James St. Aubin, chief investment officer at Ocean Park Asset Management: &ldquo;If the market believes the Fed is making policy in reaction to direct political influence, U.S. assets will become less attractive.&rdquo;
But she also interviews Stefan Gleason from the precious metals dealer Money Metals Exchange &mdash; who shares your editor&rsquo;s assessment that Fed &ldquo;independence&rdquo; is a myth.
As Gleason sees it, the Fed is &ldquo;an inherently political institution, not only because the Board of Governors is appointed by the president with Senate confirmation, but our entire monetary system is now political in nature. We no longer have sound money backed by gold, but political money, where policymakers centrally plan the economy via changes to monetary policy.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Still, perceptions matter more than reality. If conventional wisdom believes in Fed independence... and if it further believes Trump is undermining that independence&hellip; there will be consequences in the markets.
&ldquo;The U.S. Federal Reserve must henceforth be considered the personal political agency of Donald Trump. America&rsquo;s monetary credibility has been utterly trashed,&rdquo; writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the world economics editor for the London Telegraph.
&ldquo;AEP,&rdquo; as he&rsquo;s known, is no effete European liberal; as the paper&rsquo;s Washington editor in the 1990s he broke story after story about the Clinton scandals that American outlets wouldn&rsquo;t touch. More recently he advocated for &ldquo;Brexit&rdquo; &mdash; the U.K.&rsquo;s departure from the European Union.
His point now? &ldquo;Trump can bulldoze his way through resistance within the U.S. &mdash; and he can strong-arm foreign allies into concessions, until they cease to be allies &mdash; but there is one great immovable power that is beyond his reach.
&ldquo;He cannot force the global bond market to buy U.S. Treasuries and fund his debt.&rdquo;
That means Treasury notes and bonds are a long-term loser &mdash; <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/breaking-the-china-habit#2">a case we were making last week</a> even before the Lisa Cook story burst wide open.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But on the flip side, if the perception takes hold that the Fed has lost its independence, &ldquo;gold would be the safe haven of choice.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s the assessment of Chris Gannatti, global head of research at the WisdomTree family of ETFs.
&ldquo;Gold has no counterparty risk, no reliance on government credibility and a track record spanning thousands of years as the ultimate store of value,&rdquo; he tells MarketWatch. &ldquo;In times of political or monetary uncertainty, it is the asset investors trust most to preserve purchasing power.&rdquo;
That&rsquo;s even with the gold price in striking distance of its recent record highs. As we mentioned earlier this summer, central bank purchases of gold are keeping a floor under the gold price &mdash; while retail investors are only starting to rediscover the Midas metal.
Even mainstream forecasters won&rsquo;t rule out the possibility of gold climbing from current levels under $3,500 to over $4,000 as early as year-end.
So if you still haven&rsquo;t followed the guidance of our Jim Rickards &mdash; physical gold as 10% of your investable assets &mdash; there&rsquo;s still time.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />&ldquo;Sticky&rdquo; Inflation
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> There&rsquo;s nothing to like in the latest government inflation reading. At all.
This morning the Commerce Department issued its &ldquo;core PCE&rdquo; figure &mdash; the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s preferred measure of inflation. It came in as expected &mdash; a 2.9% increase from a year ago.
When Fed officials refer to their 2% inflation target, it&rsquo;s the core PCE figure they have in mind. Not only is core PCE nowhere near 2%, it&rsquo;s been stuck in a channel between 2.6% on the low side and 3% on the high side for the last 18 months. Talk about &ldquo;sticky&rdquo; inflation.
And yet as we write this morning, futures traders assess an 87% probability the Fed will lower short-term interest rates at its next meeting on Sept. 17 because&hellip;
&hellip;because the job numbers are looking punk? (We&rsquo;ll have a more current read on that a week from today.)
&hellip; because the president demands lower interest rates, inflation be damned? (Where&rsquo;s this sub-$2 gasoline <a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1960375874559373315">he keeps talking about</a>? Nowhere my wife and I have been traveling this month.)
Neither of those rationales bodes well for the dollar or U.S. Treasury debt &mdash; which, as noted above, are already under pressure amid the president&rsquo;s attempts to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> After an &ldquo;unusually quiet&rdquo; August, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll be dealing with a potentially volatile September after we all say goodbye to summer this Labor Day weekend,&rdquo; Paradigm&rsquo;s Greg Guenthner tells his Trading Desk readers.
&ldquo;I suspect the Fed drama will continue into next week. The Lisa Cook story isn&rsquo;t going anywhere, and everyone is getting ready for a rate cut later next month. Something is bound to spook investors. But so far, that something has yet to materialize. Not even NVDA earnings could stir the pot. The king of the chips danced around yesterday, but closed lower by less than 1%.&rdquo;
Heck, the S&amp;P 500 just barely hit another all-time high. But that was yesterday and this is today: The index is down 0.8% to 6,450.
The new inflation reading has propelled gold $20 higher to $3,436. And silver is on track for its first weekly close over $39 since 2011.
Crude is off nearly 1%, hanging onto the $64 level by a thread. Crypto can&rsquo;t get any traction, Bitcoin a little over $108,000 and Ethereum under $4,300.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Sign of the Times
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> One word: Yikes&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1SwNXs7yFipzj8G67g9HeT/44b9fd8cbd3a4f3f106c038e5833cee0/Arbor.png" alt="Arbor" width="540px" />
In our voluminous archives is something I wrote in 2012 while covering a conference in Vancouver. Flipping on the TV in my hotel room, I was struck by the commercials pushing 84-month auto financing &mdash; at the time, nearly unheard of in the States.
&ldquo;Must be an awful lot of Canadians rolling an existing car loan into a new one when they trade in,&rdquo; I mused. Now it&rsquo;s becoming de rigueur here in the States&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />If memory serves, this is the first time a &ldquo;Drakeposting&rdquo; meme has made an appearance in these virtual pages&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2ATQZ8xjEya71FzzE6VyTv/2d9b66ab2241341d66740d74283a1864/socialized-healthcare.png" alt="socialized healthcare" width="540px" />
And here&rsquo;s a bonus chuckle going into the holiday weekend&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/33aZrZHXELphcL4r4D3F4b/096551f2950c3c235e00e0056d41fe53/dollar.png" alt="dollar" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Lisa Cook
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Hell no, she won&rsquo;t go,&rdquo; reads the subject line of a reader&rsquo;s email.
&ldquo;Why should Lisa Cook leave? You may trust she has semi-competent legal advice. That would be: Say nothing!
&ldquo;The mortgage fraud case may be past the statute of limitations or have other defects. However, a denial creates the fresh offense of misleading a federal investigation. Could have more serious penalties.&rdquo;
&ldquo;In classic style, Mr. Trump ought to request Ms. Bondi seek an indictment. Once under
indictment, statutes are triggered. No rush &mdash; when is the next vote?&rdquo;
Dave responds: The Fed&rsquo;s Open Market Committee meets next on Sept. 16&ndash;17.
Presumably by then there will have been a tentative court ruling of one sort or another &mdash; perhaps allowing Cook to remain in her post pending the case&rsquo;s final disposition. As we write, a federal judge in Washington is reviewing Cook&rsquo;s request for a temporary restraining order to prevent her removal.
Cook has Washington super-lawyer Abbe Lowell in her corner. As noted here Wednesday, Lowell&rsquo;s recent clients run the gamut from Hunter Biden to Ivanka Trump. But he goes way, way back, representing scandal-scarred clients of yesteryear like House Speaker Jim Wright and banker Charles Keating &mdash; both caught up in the savings-and-loan mess of the late 1980s.
Don&rsquo;t underestimate Lowell&rsquo;s effectiveness: Wright resigned under pressure, but he never faced criminal charges. And while Keating went to prison, his convictions were ultimately overturned on appeal.
The Cook case will, if nothing else, make for an entertaining autumn.
Have a good weekend,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Trump-reserve

If conventional wisdom believes in Fed independence... and if it further believes Trump is undermining that independence… there will be market consequences. 

The Lisa Cook Gold Trade

Declassified

Buck Sexton isn’t just another political commentator; he was called recently into a closed-door meeting at the White House… 

The Ultimate White House Insider

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />If Lisa Cook Won&rsquo;t Leave&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Imagine reading the following news story sometime this fall&hellip;
<blockquote>WASHINGTON &mdash; Global markets were thrown into turmoil Thursday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump had the authority to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The ruling came one day after a contentious vote by the Fed&rsquo;s Open Market Committee that ended in a 6-6 tie. Under FOMC rules, Fed Chair Jerome Powell served as the tiebreaker, resulting in a decision to lower the fed funds rate by a quarter percentage point.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The court did not address the validity of Cook&rsquo;s actions in office since Trump ordered her firing on Aug. 25, leaving many market participants to question the vote&rsquo;s outcome. Cook also voted to lower the fed funds rate. In the absence of her vote, however, the result would have been a 6-5 decision to leave the rate at its previous level.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The uncertainty surrounding the Fed&rsquo;s decision shook confidence in the dollar and U.S. Treasury debt. The U.S. dollar index fell to fresh lows for the year while longer-term interest rates soared, the 10-year Treasury yield reaching its highest level since 2007. The Dow industrials registered their first daily loss of more than 1,000 points since April. Gold rallied to a record $3,766 an ounce.</blockquote>
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Admittedly this scenario is an extreme outlier. But it spotlights the stakes &mdash; and the potential for market volatility in the final months of 2025.
When we left you yesterday, Trump had informed Cook he was firing her on the grounds there&rsquo;s evidence she committed mortgage fraud when buying two properties in 2021. Cook had lawyered up and said she&rsquo;s going nowhere.
During a cabinet meeting yesterday, Trump boasted that soon he&rsquo;ll have appointed a majority of the Fed&rsquo;s seven-member Board of Governors &mdash; all of whom have a vote on the 12-member panel that sets short-term interest rates.
(The other five are drawn from the 12 presidents of regional Fed banks. Now you know.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Cook refusing to leave puts the Fed in a difficult position,&rdquo; observes Jim Bianco of the institutional research firm Bianco Research.
Bianco spins a somewhat different scenario from the one above. Assume the courts side with the president and rule that Cook&rsquo;s firing is justified. Assume further that the courts make it plain that Cook&rsquo;s actions in office since yesterday are null and void.
Under those circumstances, &ldquo;the Fed could be held responsible for allowing a non-employee to continue to act like an employee,&rdquo; Bianco tweets.
What&rsquo;s more, &ldquo;if the Fed allows her to stay and continue to be a governor, and the court rules that Trump can fire her (again, even if it is later in an appeal), then [Fed chair] Jay Powell has potentially committed a &lsquo;for cause&rsquo; offense for which he could be fired (allowing a non-Fed employee to make decisions and policy on behalf of the Federal Reserve.)&rdquo;
Hmmm&hellip; Maybe that&rsquo;s the plan?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> None of this would matter were it not for the fact that Wall Street and the media are fixated on Trump&rsquo;s effort &ldquo;to take control of the independent central bank and its vast authority over interest rates.&rdquo;
(That was on the front page of today&rsquo;s Wall Street Journal.)
We can&rsquo;t say it often enough: Fed independence is a myth. As we related yesterday, President Lyndon Johnson once shoved Fed chair William McChesney Martin into a wall to reinforce his wishes for lower interest rates.
Martin&rsquo;s successor, Arthur Burns, caved to pressure from President Richard Nixon to open the monetary spigots and ensure Nixon&rsquo;s reelection in 1972. (The result was the near-runaway inflation of the Jimmy Carter years.)
More recently, Joe Biden made it clear that he expected Powell&rsquo;s Fed to get inflation back under control: &ldquo;A critical job in making sure that the elevated prices don't become entrenched rests with the Federal Reserve."
So a central bank directly under the president&rsquo;s thumb wouldn&rsquo;t be a radical departure as much as an honest admission of how the system really works.
A better system altogether would be to abolish the Fed and let the free market set interest rates. (Your editor would also like a pony.)
But no, this transformation won&rsquo;t be good for confidence in the dollar or in U.S. Treasury debt.
Got gold? Got silver? Got mining stocks?
Those will be your shelter as the ongoing failures of the Fed become manifest to all &mdash; and as Trump seeks not to dismantle the Fed but only to remake it in his image.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Waiting on NVDA
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> We&rsquo;re hours away from the most-hyped market event of the summer: Nvidia reports its earnings after the closing bell.
&ldquo;Nvidia has become the heartbeat of the AI trade,&rdquo; writes Davis Wilson of our sister e-letter The Million Mission. &ldquo;It makes up about 7.5% of the S&amp;P 500, and every hyperscaler (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta) is leaning on Nvidia&rsquo;s chips to power their AI ambitions.&rdquo;
Wall Street&rsquo;s expectations are high &mdash; but even if NVDA misses those expectations, Davis is unfazed.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s still a line out the door and around the block for Nvidia&rsquo;s products,&rdquo; Davis says. &ldquo;Wedbush estimates demand to supply is running at 10-to-1 right now. That&rsquo;s an unbelievable statistic for a product of this scale.
&ldquo;Yes, Nvidia&rsquo;s stock is expensive,&rdquo; he allows. &ldquo;But expensive stocks can stay expensive when they have a monopoly-like position in a trillion-dollar trend.
&ldquo;My prediction is simple: this AI buildout continues steadily for at least the next year or more.&rdquo;
<blockquote>➢ For a different view of NVDA, we invite you to review <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/caveat-emptor1">our Aug. 14 edition</a>. As a reminder, we don&rsquo;t expect our editors to toe a &ldquo;company line.&rdquo; We do expect them to have strong convictions with the facts to back them up. When those convictions come into conflict, we respect your intelligence enough to reach your own conclusions.</blockquote>
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Going into NVDA&rsquo;s earnings &mdash; which will likely set the tone for the rest of the market tomorrow &mdash; the major U.S. averages are meandering.
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is up a tenth of a percent at 6,473. The Dow&rsquo;s gain is a little stronger; the Nasdaq is flat.
Not much movement in precious metals, either &mdash; gold at $3,389 and silver at $38.48. Crude is up over 1% and back within reach of $64.
Bitcoin languishes under $112,000. Ethereum continues to recover from a Monday beatdown, back over $4,600.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />&ldquo;Secondary Tariffs,&rdquo; Now in Effect
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> As Trump continues to entangle himself in the Russia-Ukraine war, his 50% tariffs on imports from India took effect today.
From the Financial Times: &ldquo;The Global Trade Research Initiative, a New Delhi-based think tank, said textiles, gems, jewellery, shrimp and carpets would be worst affected. Semiconductors, consumer electronics and pharmaceuticals will be covered by separate, sector-specific U.S. tariffs.&rdquo;
Half of this 50% import tax was already in effect &mdash; part of Trump&rsquo;s &ldquo;reciprocal tariff&rdquo; regime. The other half aims to punish India specifically for its purchases of Russian oil.
The Trump administration is also displeased with China&rsquo;s purchases of Russian oil &mdash; and the threat of similar &ldquo;secondary tariffs&rdquo; remains.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But none of it will give Washington leverage, says Paradigm&rsquo;s macroeconomics maven Jim Rickards.
Fifty percent tariffs on India? &ldquo;India shrugged them off, kept buying Russian oil and made plans to find new customers and adopt import substitution policies to make itself less dependent on trade with the U.S.&rdquo;
As for China&hellip; &ldquo;China can&rsquo;t do without the oil and has plans to put tariffs on U.S. goods (including soybeans) in retaliation,&rdquo; Jim wrote to his Strategic Intelligence readers on Monday.
Meanwhile, &ldquo;Trump pushed his deadline for a trade deal with China out to early November. No trade deal can be achieved with secondary sanctions hanging over the discussion, so the secondary sanctions are effectively pushed out to November also.
&ldquo;The early November date is meaningful because it comes after the Chinese shipments of Christmas goods for the U.S. will have arrived in the Port of Los Angeles. This shows that Trump does not really want the confrontation with China that he claims.&rdquo;
At the same time, &ldquo;Trump has also pushed India and China closer together because both are on the threatened secondary sanctions list. That makes the BRICS (including Russia) even stronger.&rdquo;
And for what?
Jim continues to believe Trump is getting bad advice about Russia-Ukraine in the same way Lyndon Johnson got bad advice about Vietnam. &ldquo;Trump&rsquo;s presidency may be destroyed by Ukraine if he does not end U.S. involvement quickly.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Everyone&rsquo;s on a budget these days&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2tlTSMM5MlxT8quKXv5gpy/31efd9446a84a887b92e80bdb811cb48/cooking.png" alt="cooking" width="350px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: The (Other) F Word
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />After <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/uncle-sams-stock-buying-spree">yesterday&rsquo;s Bullet No. 1</a> about the federal government taking stakes in publicly traded companies, a reader writes&hellip;
&ldquo;According to the American Heritage Dictionary, fascism is &lsquo;a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.&rdquo; Economically, private ownership of production with government control of business decisions.
&ldquo;How is the current situation different than that? I&rsquo;m honestly asking. No, Trump is not technically a dictator. No &lsquo;violent&rsquo; suppression. Nationalism? Check. Racism? I don&rsquo;t honestly believe that&rsquo;s the case.
&ldquo;However, it seems we&rsquo;re heading in that direction. Your thoughts?&rdquo;
Dave responds: Today isn&rsquo;t the day to unpack similarities and differences with Mussolini. For now, let&rsquo;s keep the focus on Uncle Sam taking a stake in public companies.
"So Intel has raised some money from the U.S. government, in exchange for equity, and discovered that previous money sent to them by the government should have been reciprocated with equity all along," writes Byrne Hobart at a site called The Diff.
"It's actually an incredibly tempting approach to couple corporate subsidies with equity ownership. If the government is making a company better off, it seems only fair to give the government a stake in the upside, perhaps at a valuation that still makes it an obviously good deal for the company.
&ldquo;The problem is that the long-term incentive is for the company to arrange itself around needing constant infusions of capital. The more Intel raises this way, the more attractive further subsidies are, since they help bail out the previous investment.&rdquo;
Or ponder the feds taking a stake in a military contractor like Lockheed Martin.
As William Hartung of the Quincy Institute tells the Reuters newswire, such a move might &ldquo;incentivize the government to put financial success for Lockheed Martin ahead of more important strategic considerations... We need some healthy distance between the government and the companies it is supposed to regulate."
As Charlie Munger &mdash; Warren Buffett&rsquo;s late business partner &mdash; was fond of saying, &ldquo;Show me the incentive and I&rsquo;ll show you the outcome.&rdquo;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

LisaCook

When we left you yesterday, Trump had informed Fed Governor Lisa Cook he was firing her. 

If Lisa Cook Won’t Leave… 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Uncle Sam&rsquo;s Stock-Buying Spree
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Donald Trump is ready for the next target in his merger-and-acquisition spree.
After the federal government declared last Friday it would take a 10% stake in Intel, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says the Trump administration is looking next at military contractors.
Asked this morning on CNBC whether other companies doing business with the feds are fair game, Lutnick replied, &ldquo;Oh there&rsquo;s a monstrous discussion about defense.&rdquo;
He described Lockheed Martin, the world&rsquo;s biggest military contractor, as &ldquo;basically an arm of the U.S. government.&rdquo;
He has a point. Last year, 73% of LMT&rsquo;s total revenue came from U.S. government contracts.
Really, Lockheed&rsquo;s fate has been tied to that of Uncle Sam&rsquo;s going as far back as 1971 &mdash; when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy and the Nixon administration engineered a bailout in the form of $250 million in taxpayer-backed loans.
(Hey, that was a big amount of money back then&hellip;)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> You take the government&rsquo;s money, you dance to the government&rsquo;s tune.
That&rsquo;s always been the case. Federal subsidies leave you open to federal influence.
But until now it was never really in-your-face.
In many realms, Donald Trump doesn&rsquo;t break from &ldquo;norms&rdquo; of governance as much as he simply says the quiet part out loud.
And so when Intel spent much of this year flailing for direction, Trump insisted last week that $8.9 billion in federal aid awarded during the Biden administration be converted into a government ownership stake totaling 10% of the company.
As I said just yesterday, it wasn&rsquo;t the first such deal: The feds took a 15% stake in the rare earth firm MP Materials. There&rsquo;s also the new stake in U.S. Steel.
And as we see today, it won&rsquo;t be the last.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> You might or might not like this &ldquo;state capitalism&rdquo; or &ldquo;command capitalism.&rdquo; But whatever your opinion, you have to understand how it will massively alter the flows of trillions of dollars.
With that as the backdrop, we&rsquo;re making an essential addition to the Paradigm team this week.
He&rsquo;s Buck Sexton. You might recognize him as a radio talk-show host; in many cities he and his partner Clay Travis took over Rush Limbaugh&rsquo;s old time slot.
But what makes him valuable to us &mdash; and to you, the reader &mdash; is his unique level of access inside the Trump White House, unlike anyone else in the newsletter biz.
Which is how he recently learned about an effort every bit as ambitious as the Manhattan Project during World War II.
The short story: The feds will be throwing their weight behind a technology priority so big, it will pump $2.2 trillion into the U.S. economy. The beneficiaries will include several small and little-known companies poised to deliver huge gains to early investors.
(Maybe the feds will take a stake in these firms, maybe not. Either way, the profit potential is undeniable.)
We&rsquo;ll leave it there for today. Expect to hear more from Buck Sexton later this week &mdash; and over the holiday weekend.
In the meantime we turn our attention to the big market-moving story of the day&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />(Virtual) Standoff at the Fed
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Well now, here&rsquo;s a first. From the Wikipedia page of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3CttvuyxNixLqmlujngZDh/1fae8965fb1fc36ff6d20c56b1824fd4/Lisa.png" alt="lisa" width="350px" />
Last night, Trump informed Cook via a letter that she was fired. &ldquo;I have determined that there is sufficient cause to remove you from your position.&rdquo;
Cook, for her part, says she&rsquo;s going nowhere. &ldquo;President Trump purported to fire me &lsquo;for cause&rsquo; when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign.&rdquo;
Indeed she plans to sue &mdash; and she&rsquo;s hired Washington super-lawyer Abbe Lowell to make her case. Lowell&rsquo;s clients in the recent past have run the gamut from Hunter Biden to Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. (Hmmm&hellip;)
So far today, there&rsquo;s no evidence of an armed standoff outside the Marriner Eccles building in Washington &mdash; entertaining as such a prospect might be.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> So let&rsquo;s dig into this &ldquo;for cause&rdquo; business &mdash; because that&rsquo;s at the heart of when the president has the authority to fire a Fed governor.
Last month when Trump was making noises about firing Fed chair Jerome Powell, Paradigm&rsquo;s Jim Rickards dusted off his Wall Street lawyer credentials to help us unpack the legalities.
&ldquo;In most circumstances,&rdquo; Jim said, &ldquo;cause would include any crime or even noncriminal activities if they constituted material misrepresentations, violations of internal policies and procedures, ignoring bad acts by others and any breaches of fiduciary duties to the institution. It might also apply to other breaches that might not be crimes such as fudging expense reports, diverting funds for unauthorized uses, etc.&rdquo;
Does firing a Fed official simply for not lowering interest rates fast enough for the president&rsquo;s liking constitute &ldquo;cause&rdquo;? Hard saying. Certainly it&rsquo;s never been tested in court.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> But lying on a mortgage application? That&rsquo;s more clear-cut.
In 2021, Cook bought two homes &mdash; a house in Michigan (she was a professor at Michigan State at the time) and a condo in Georgia.
&ldquo;They were purchased within two weeks of each other,&rdquo; writes Eric Salzman for Matt Taibbi&rsquo;s Racket News project &mdash; &ldquo;and Cook listed both as her primary residence on her mortgage applications.&rdquo;
<blockquote>➢ This primary-residence thing is not to be trifled with. When my wife and I moved to the Upper Midwest some years ago, we had a notion of arriving at our new home on the day of our wedding anniversary; we liked the symbolism. Well, that was the plan until we realized our anniversary fell just outside the 60-day window in which mortgage lenders typically expect you to move into a primary residence after closing. We adjusted our moving date accordingly.</blockquote>
&ldquo;Unless Cook can show that this is all a big mistake,&rdquo; Salzman writes, &ldquo;she committed a felony.&rdquo;
The head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, has referred Cook&rsquo;s case to the Justice Department.
&ldquo;Was she targeted by Pulte?&rdquo; asks Salzman. &ldquo;Probably, although Pulte stated this was part of a wider investigation into mortgage fraud.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The legacy media are all verklempt about &ldquo;an extraordinary assault on the independence of the U.S. central bank,&rdquo; as the Financial Times put it.
Fed &ldquo;independence&rdquo; is a joke: Back in the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson shoved Fed chair William McChesney Martin into a wall to reinforce his wishes for lower interest rates.
But much as we sneer at the Fed in these virtual pages, lots of people in financial markets take the Fed and its alleged independence very seriously.
Thus, the dollar is down today relative to other major currencies. And yields on U.S. Treasuries are up.
&ldquo;Markets run on confidence. The dollar&rsquo;s dominance runs on confidence. And Fed independence has always been a pillar of that system,&rdquo; writes Paradigm&rsquo;s recovering investment banker Sean Ring in today&rsquo;s Rude Awakening.
&ldquo;If traders, investors and foreign governments start to believe the Fed is no longer insulated from politics, they&rsquo;ll price that risk in. That means higher borrowing costs for America. That means more volatility.
&ldquo;But luckily for us, that means gold and silver should start ripping higher in their roles as safe havens.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Indeed, the gold price popped last night in electronic trading shortly before Trump&rsquo;s announcement &mdash; the latest in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/extortion-racket#2">a series of suspicious market moves</a> this summer.
At last check, the Midas metal is up nearly $22 to $3,386 &mdash; a two-week high. Silver&rsquo;s gain is weaker, up 7 cents to $38.57.
After modest losses yesterday, the major U.S. stock averages are all in the green, but not by much. The S&amp;P 500 is up less than four points to 6,442.
Oil is falling hard from three-week highs, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate down over 2% to $63.41.
<blockquote>➢ One economic number of note today: Durable goods orders fell 2.8% last month, but the number was skewed by a drop in aircraft orders. If you exclude aircraft and military hardware &mdash; both very lumpy from month to month &mdash; orders for &ldquo;core capital goods&rdquo; registered a solid 1.1% jump.</blockquote>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Tesla Insider Speaks Up
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;This wasn&rsquo;t a carefully scripted investor day or a viral tweet,&rdquo; says Paradigm contributor Davis Wilson, editor of our sister e-letter The Million Mission.
Davis was privy last week to some remarkable insights about one of the most buzzy companies of the past decade &mdash; Tesla.
He had an off-the-record dinner with a senior engineer working on Tesla&rsquo;s batteries. From that dinner, Davis gleaned three insights that &ldquo;challenge the narrative Wall Street keeps recycling about this company.&rdquo;
The first insight is that battery range won&rsquo;t matter in a future of driverless cars &mdash; because in that future, &ldquo;consumers aren&rsquo;t tied to the car in their driveway,&rdquo; says Davis. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re hailing rides from an autonomous fleet.
&ldquo;If one vehicle runs low on charge, it simply drives itself to the nearest charger, recharges and returns to service.&rdquo;
Thus Tesla isn&rsquo;t worried about better batteries as much as it is about maintaining a reliable charging network &mdash; and making sure that network&rsquo;s supply chain isn&rsquo;t dependent on China.
The engineer&rsquo;s second insight: &ldquo;Elon is the single node in a lot of decisions that slows Tesla&rsquo;s progress.&rdquo; That is, Elon Musk insists on making the final call when it comes to all manner of Tesla&rsquo;s operations. As Davis sums up, &ldquo;When one person insists on weighing in on everything &mdash; big and small &mdash; you create a bottleneck.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The final insight: Even this Tesla insider thinks TSLA stock is overvalued.
&ldquo;Tesla&rsquo;s valuation has always been polarizing,&rdquo; Davis reminds us. &ldquo;At Tesla&rsquo;s current $1T valuation, the company is worth more than Ford, GM, Toyota, Volkswagen, Stellantis, Mercedes, Lucid and Honda COMBINED&hellip; despite selling a fraction of the vehicles.
&ldquo;Bulls argue it deserves the premium because Tesla is really an AI, energy and robotics company rolled into one. Bears argue the fundamentals can&rsquo;t support it.
&ldquo;Hearing an insider lean toward the bearish view gives that argument more weight. When the people building the product think the market has gotten carried away, it&rsquo;s worth paying attention.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> From the annals of depreciating fiat currency&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6uFhwQLGD9f59Zi2XFIqsa/a9e6c7ae8e1cdc358180e7d970c26ed1/2002.png" alt="2002" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Extraction
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The mailbag <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-mexican-american-war-of-2025">in yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a> struck a chord in a way I didn&rsquo;t quite expect.
&ldquo;Spot-on,&rdquo; wrote one reader. &ldquo;Hyperinflation, wealth extraction and private ownership at the public's expense have been part of the &lsquo;economic plan&rsquo; for several decades now. Politics is wrapped up in it and can't be avoided.
&ldquo;Everyday people who are trying to avoid the upper crust's stupidity have been screwed by unrealistic &lsquo;neoclassical&rsquo; economic models. Call it what you want. &lsquo;Liberalization, deregulation and privatization.&rsquo; &lsquo;Free markets and free trade.&rsquo; &lsquo;Globalization.&rsquo; It was all a massive failure for the working class.
&ldquo;The only way out seems to be to run your own business, bank locally, acquire property and precious metals and defend your family.
&ldquo;Keep the recommendations coming. We need all the help we can get.&rdquo;
Another reader followed the link to our voluminous archives and <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2021/08/10/extraction-10-years-later/">a 2021 edition about &ldquo;extraction.&rdquo;</a>
&ldquo;Do you have &lsquo;&ldquo;Extraction&rdquo; in one chart&rsquo; updated to 2025?&rdquo; he inquires. &ldquo;I am sure it is on the same trajectory, and likely steeper. Thank you for the Ratigan rage! Love the 5.&rdquo;
Dave responds: I&rsquo;ve searched high and low for a more current version of that chart ever since I first ran across it in Marc Faber&rsquo;s Gloom, Boom and Doom Report in 2013.
That said, one of the economists who compiled the chart <a href="https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2022.pdf">issued a paper last year</a> on the same general theme, updated through 2022.
His conclusion is that the upheaval wrought by the government&rsquo;s reaction to COVID made the income disparity even worse than it was before &mdash; stimmy checks notwithstanding.
From 2019&ndash;2022, the bottom 99% saw their after-inflation incomes grow by 1.0% &mdash; compared with the top 1%, who enjoyed 16.1% growth.
&ldquo;Hence,&rdquo; wrote UC-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, &ldquo;top 1% families captured 81% of total real income growth per family&rdquo; during that four-year span.
As for the first reader&rsquo;s comment, the power elite in this country have so thoroughly corrupted the meaning of terms like the &ldquo;free market&rdquo;... that in a Cato Institute/YouGov survey this spring, 62% of adults under 30 have a favorable view of socialism.
And yes, that&rsquo;s up meaningfully from the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
I&rsquo;ve said it before this year in different contexts and I&rsquo;ll say it again now: However much gold and Bitcoin you hold as a hedge against the debasement of the U.S. dollar, it&rsquo;s probably not enough.
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Trump-Chess

Donald Trump is ready for the next target in his merger-and-acquisition spree.

Uncle Sam’s Stock-Buying Spree

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Mexican-American War of 2025
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I expect a shooting war between Mexico and the U.S. in the near future,&rdquo; Paradigm&rsquo;s Jim Rickards said in this space during early February.
&ldquo;The Mexican drug cartels are planning to use drones for aerial attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is war. Trump, [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth won't put up with it for much longer.&rdquo;
Nearly seven months have gone by since.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> A hint at what&rsquo;s to come arrived on Aug. 12 &mdash; when the State Department issued an updated travel advisory for Mexico.
Understand, the State Department has four levels of travel advisories&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3X58oxmv7gKP15BtUKtEB6/4c901e3cb67243a79f17f7e7d8f90267/travel-advisory.png" alt="travel advisory" width="350px" />
Mexico as a whole is considered Level 2. As such, U.S. government employees may not travel between cities after dark and must &ldquo;rely on dispatched vehicles from regulated taxi stands or app-based services like Uber or Cabify and may not wave down taxis on the street,&rdquo; according to the State Department. U.S. citizens in Mexico are advised to do likewise.
Several individual Mexican states are at higher levels. Of the six states bordering the United States, three are at Level 3 and a fourth, Tamaulipas, is at Level 4.
In Tamaulipas, &ldquo;heavily armed members of criminal groups often patrol the state, especially along the border region from Reynosa to Nuevo Laredo,&rdquo; says the State Department website.. &ldquo;They act without fear of punishment in these areas, and local law enforcement has limited capacity to respond to crime.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Now, the latest: &ldquo;The Trump administration has directed the military to prepare for lethal strikes against cartel targets inside Mexico,&rdquo; reports the independent journalist Ken Klippenstein &mdash; citing &ldquo;three military sources.&rdquo;
No, there would be no involvement on the part of the Mexican government. Trump &ldquo;has shown himself to be willing to take unilateral action despite potentially negative political ramifications,&rdquo; according to a &ldquo;senior intelligence official.&rdquo;
The ball got rolling last month during a meeting at NORTHCOM headquarters in Colorado Springs, as Klippenstein reports&hellip;
<blockquote>NORTHCOM has tasked its subordinate Special Operations Command (called SOCNORTH) to undertake &ldquo;operational preparation of the battlespace&rdquo; inside Mexico to set the stage for future military operations, and to prepare cartel-related &ldquo;target packages&rdquo; for potential strikes and &ldquo;direct action&rdquo; attacks on the ground against high-value individuals, compounds and supply chain targets associated in particular with the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Direct attacks could also involve air and drone strikes.</blockquote>
<blockquote>&ldquo;Direct action&rdquo; is a term special operations forces use to describe small-scale offensive operations carried out by Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs or Marine Corps raiders. Think of the airstrikes on Iran this summer as a kind of direct action, against a discrete target with a &ldquo;strategic&rdquo; or national purpose.</blockquote>
It&rsquo;s hard to imagine air strikes alone achieving the objective &mdash; whatever the objective might be, and that seems very fuzzy at the moment. &ldquo;Destroy&rdquo; Sinaloa or the Zetas? Good luck with that.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Which means at some point, the Pentagon would deploy &ldquo;door-kickers&rdquo; in cartel country.
They would face a formidable opponent. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-coming-border-war">Back in February</a> we cited Cato Institute scholar Brandan Buck: &ldquo;Sending U.S. Special Operations into a direct confrontation with the Mexican cartels would pit them against a near-peer competitor, who, like the Taliban, would likely enjoy the direct or tacit support of the local populace and the luxury of hiding in punishing terrain.&rdquo;
But unlike the Taliban, the cartels would likely start to employ the tactics they use at home inside the United States. 
For instance, as the military affairs podcaster Bill Buppert said in <a href="https://libertarianinstitute.org/scotthortonshow/4-10-25-bill-buppert-on-the-prospects-for-war-in-iran-and-northern-mexico/?feed_id=20282&amp;_unique_id=6810db9e24ea1">an interview last spring</a>, it&rsquo;s highly likely the cartels would pin down the identities of special forces soldiers &mdash; and proceed to attack their families and homes.
And then what?
In any event, &ldquo;a cartel war is guaranteed to fail because the illicit drug trade is not something that can be fixed by military means,&rdquo; writes the foreign policy researcher Daniel Larison. &ldquo;It is setting the U.S. military up for another mission that is doomed from the start.&rdquo;
<blockquote>➢ And at the same time, there&rsquo;s increasing chatter about U.S. military action against Venezuela. Asked on Friday about the prospect of American &ldquo;boots on the ground,&rdquo; White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to rule it out.</blockquote>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Intel Inside? More Like *Government* Inside
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Intel isn&rsquo;t the first &mdash; and it definitely won&rsquo;t be the last.
After we hit &ldquo;send&rdquo; on <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-street-buried-intel">Friday&rsquo;s timely edition</a> of these 5 Bullets, the White House confirmed that the U.S. government would take a 10% share of Intel.
&ldquo;The stake is worth around $8.9 billion,&rdquo; according to CNBC &mdash; &ldquo;some of which will come from grant funding associated with the CHIPS Act while the rest will be under separate government allocations for programs associated with making secure chips.&rdquo;
In other words, no new outlays of taxpayer funds.
What&rsquo;s more, it seems Uncle Sam got a bargain price. If the government&rsquo;s stake is 10% of the company valued at $8.9 billion, that values the whole company at $89 billion. But in mid-August, INTC&rsquo;s market cap was about $107.5 billion.
Still, free-market purists are appalled.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2uajTn6uCiDe0YmnnIr2XN/48054c6d932ee29e42e0bd35385d4f07/SpencerTweet2.png" alt="spencer tweet" width="540px" />
The announcement comes only a few weeks after the government announced it would take a 15% stake in the rare-earths firm MP Materials (a move that proved enormously profitable for Altucher&rsquo;s True Alpha subscribers &mdash; a 918% gain).
On CNBC this morning, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said more such deals are in the offing.
&ldquo;The president has made it clear all the way back to the campaign, he thinks that in the end, it would be great if the U.S. could start to build up a sovereign wealth fund. So I&rsquo;m sure that at some point there&rsquo;ll be more transactions, if not in this industry then other industries.&rdquo;
[Not up to speed on a sovereign wealth fund? Check out <a href="https://newsyoucanacton.com/posts/99-sovereign-wealth-funds-and-counting">this morning&rsquo;s edition of our sister e-letter, </a><a href="https://newsyoucanacton.com/posts/99-sovereign-wealth-funds-and-counting">The Rundown</a>.]
This is one instance in which the old Wall Street saying about &ldquo;buy the rumor, sell the news&rdquo; does not apply. INTC rallied 5.5% on Friday&hellip; and it&rsquo;s up another 1.2% as we write today.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Fed&rsquo;s Big Oopsie
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The Federal Reserve is trying to put the inflationary genie back in its bottle.
We mentioned the annual &ldquo;Jackson Hole speech&rdquo; delivered by Fed chair Jerome Powell in Friday&rsquo;s edition. The big headline was that Powell all but cleared the way for the Fed to start cutting interest rates again next month.
But a bigger, more long-term story emerged from Powell&rsquo;s speech that deserves our attention today.
<blockquote>➢ For the moment we&rsquo;ll leave aside the sheer evil of a deliberate effort to cut the value of your dollars in half over the course of 36 years&hellip;</blockquote>
But in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, inflation frequently ran less than 2% during the 2010s. So by 2019, rumblings began to emerge from the Fed in the form of speeches and policy papers: Going forward, the aim might be to exceed the 2% target, basically to make up for lost time.
Amid the COVID lockdowns in the summer of 2020, the Fed made it formal policy: As Fed Governor Lael Brainard said at the time, &ldquo;Some modest temporary overshooting... would help offset the previous underperformance.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The rest is history: The overshoot was neither modest nor temporary.
The mad COVID spending, starting under Trump and accelerating under Biden, necessitated levels of Fed money printing that led to inflation of the sort Americans hadn&rsquo;t experienced in decades.
And so during his speech on Friday, Powell announced the Fed is scrapping the &ldquo;overshoot&rdquo; policy. Officially, the aim once more is for 2% inflation.
Too late. As we&rsquo;ve said time and again for the last couple of years, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/declare-your-independence-from-inflation">recent history in developed economies</a> demonstrates that once inflation sails past 5% &mdash; as it did in 2022 &mdash; it typically takes a decade to get back to &ldquo;normal&rdquo; 2% inflation.
That means the winning asset classes for the rest of the 2020s will be very much like the ones of the inflationary 1970s &mdash; precious metals, base metals, energy. Commodities. Natural resources. Tangible stuff.
And this time, you can probably add some crypto to the mix&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Mr. Market&rsquo;s sugar high from Powell&rsquo;s speech on Friday didn&rsquo;t last long.
The S&amp;P 500 rallied 1.5% Friday&hellip; but as we check our screens today, it&rsquo;s pancake-flat at 6,463. The Nasdaq is up about a quarter percent, while the Dow is down about a half percent.
Precious metals are likewise quiet after Friday&rsquo;s gains, gold at $3,371 and silver at $38.73. But crude is up nearly 2% and back within reach of $65 a barrel &mdash; a level last seen on Aug. 6.
Bitcoin&rsquo;s own sugar high on Friday had no staying power at all: After a vertical rally past $117,000 the flagship crypto sits under $113K.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> We don&rsquo;t have much to say about the overhaul of Cracker Barrel that you probably haven&rsquo;t read elsewhere, but we did get a chuckle out of this&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1pSJP0csLJsANQHkfIxwBk/2c60ab27505186e495c161ac2f4b73de/TerryTweet.png" alt="terry tweet" width="540px" />
That said, the same tweet with the identical wording appears under many, many different accounts on X. Bots much? And where did it originate?
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Buybacks
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;A thought came to mind while reading <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-backseat-drivers">your stock buyback musings</a>,&rdquo; writes one of our regular correspondents.
&ldquo;The thought connected corporate maneuvering with that criticism you repeatedly face of &lsquo;Why so much politics in your free newsletter?&rsquo;
&ldquo;Most people believe economics is about making, producing and exchanging value, ultimately building prosperity. But that&rsquo;s not the age-old game of political economy: the money game. While the masses attempt to create and exchange value, power players maneuver for ownership. The goal is owning. Though money does represent power, the wealthy know ownership turns money into enduring control.
&ldquo;Inflation (deliberate devaluing of money), debt and deficits &mdash; none of these matters &mdash;savvy players of the money game focus on the goal. Shrewd players see money as melting ice cubes or hot potatoes. Currency is energy in motion. A cunning player&rsquo;s goal is to grab every dollar passing through the system, from wages to government largesse to corporate profits (hence the Republicans' Big Beautiful Bill and stock buybacks), and flip it into ownership of land, businesses and influence. That&rsquo;s how the few in the know dominate &mdash; not by making, that is creating value, but by owning.
&ldquo;The deliberate manipulation of the money game corrupts the American economy and, in turn, American society. Donald Trump and his cronies are monetizing politics like never before. Government isn&rsquo;t governing &mdash; it&rsquo;s extracting. The cabal at the top grows richer while the masses grow poorer, angrier and more disenfranchised. Many are even conned into cheering for their own exploitation, repeating the lies that keep them loyal to a rigged game.
&ldquo;The truth that changes everything is that money is not the prize; it&rsquo;s just bait. Ownership is the lever of power. Until the masses realize how the money game is played, they&rsquo;ll keep playing blind and keep losing.
&ldquo;Awareness is the first step. I applaud you for your straight shooting and encourage you to keep spreading the truth. Once people begin to see the game clearly, they can start playing differently.
&ldquo;Who knows, maybe someday we might even choose to implement a system that creates, not extracts &mdash; a historical first.&rdquo;
Dave responds:The extraction has been ongoing for decades. The &ldquo;privatized profits, socialized risks&rdquo; of the banks&hellip; the depredations of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/luigi-mangione-isnt-the-problem">the health care cartel</a> and <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/a-totalitarian-bureaucracy-within-our-shores">the military-industrial complex</a>&hellip; higher education&hellip; Big Agra&hellip;
&ldquo;Extraction&rdquo; is an apt word, too &mdash; it was the occasion for an epic cable news rant in 2011 <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2021/08/10/extraction-10-years-later/">that I remember fondly if no one else does</a>.
What&rsquo;s different now is that there seem to be <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/elon-musk-counter-elite">competing factions of elites</a> fighting over the spoils &mdash; while normie Americans who aren&rsquo;t consumed by political tribalism are just trying to keep their heads down and their purchasing power intact.
Fortunately, our whole reason for being at Paradigm is to help with the latter&hellip;
Best regards,
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/signatures/dave-gonigam.png" alt="Dave Gonigam" width="250px" align="left" />
Dave Gonigam Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

A hint at what’s to come arrived on Aug. 12 — when the State Department issued an updated travel advisory for Mexico.

The Mexican-American War of 2025

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />From Obit to Opportunity
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Last year, Intel&rsquo;s obituary was practically written.
When INTC shares plunged below $20 after disastrous earnings in August 2024, analysts dismissed the onetime king of U.S. semiconductors as &ldquo;dead money.&rdquo;
The company had lost its footing in AI, ceded ground to Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) and was lugging around a costly foundry business nobody took seriously.
But as Paradigm&rsquo;s science-and-technology expert Ray Blanco recounts: &ldquo;Sometimes the most hated stocks become the most essential.&rdquo;
Over the past few weeks, that shift has come into focus with Washington, Tokyo and Silicon Valley suddenly circling Intel.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Everything changed with one headline on Monday: Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration was in talks to take a 10% stake in Intel. 
&ldquo;The mechanism is elegant,&rdquo; says Ray. &ldquo;Instead of writing a check, the government would convert Intel's $10.9 billion in CHIPS Act grants into equity.
&ldquo;Instant ownership without new spending. And instant validation that Intel isn't just another semiconductor company &mdash; it's critical infrastructure.&rdquo;
More than that, it was instant validation of Intel&rsquo;s role as the only American company capable of manufacturing advanced chips inside U.S. borders.
Within days of the Bloomberg report, SoftBank added fuel to the fire. The Japanese tech giant dropped $2 billion on Intel stock at $23 per share.
&ldquo;This isn&rsquo;t charity,&rdquo; Ray says. &ldquo;SoftBank already owns Arm Holdings, Intel&rsquo;s design rival. They understand this ecosystem better than anyone.&rdquo; If a player of that caliber decides to spend billions, Intel gains credibility fast.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;By the way, [the Trump administration] just negotiated 15% revenue-sharing deals with NVIDIA and AMD for China sales,&rdquo; says Ray.
That&rsquo;s a <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/extortion-racket" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stiff penalty</a> on future exports, especially since &ldquo;these aren&rsquo;t even Nvidia&rsquo;s best chips &mdash; they&rsquo;re neutered versions designed to comply with export restrictions.&rdquo;
Here&rsquo;s the kicker: &ldquo;What if Trump uses this penalty as leverage to push AMD and Nvidia to manufacture those China‑bound chips at Intel instead? &lsquo;No penalty if made at Intel.&rsquo;&rdquo;
Such a maneuver would do three things at once&hellip;
<ul>
<li>First, it hands Intel exactly what it lacks: &ldquo;major customers for its foundry business &mdash; what commercial real estate agents call &lsquo;anchor tenants&rsquo;&rdquo;</li>
<li>Second, it gives Nvidia and AMD a way to reduce their financial burden without ceding ground in China</li>
<li>And third, it brings more advanced semiconductor production back to American soil.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;That would be textbook Trump dealmaking,&rdquo; Ray says: &ldquo;Use the stick to create the carrot that solves multiple problems simultaneously.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;From a chart perspective, Intel is approaching a critical inflection point,&rdquo; adds Ray. &ldquo;The stock is testing resistance around $26 &mdash; a level that's been capped multiple times over the past year.
&ldquo;A clean break above $26 opens the door to $30, filling the gap from last August's crash,&rdquo; he says.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4Mdc3VekmLLME6MN3LuajV/8757e49fa952f9ea487925cb9988e41e/ALN-Alert-08-20-25_1_.png" alt="Intel Chart" />
The blue horizontal line: Intel&rsquo;s $26 resistance level
&ldquo;That $30 level isn't arbitrary,&rdquo; he continues. &ldquo;It represents a pre-crisis valuation before Intel's AI struggles became apparent.
&ldquo;With government backing and SoftBank validation, that level looks achievable again.
&ldquo;Sometimes the most hated stocks become the most essential when the world changes around them,&rdquo; Ray concludes. &ldquo;Intel just showed us that it is considered too big to fail.
&ldquo;That's exactly the kind of transformation that creates massive investment opportunities for those positioned early.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Mr. Market&rsquo;s Sugar High
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />During his final Jackson Hole speech as Fed chair, Jerome Powell hinted this morning at a potential policy pivot &mdash; if the data cooperate, of course.
He points out the labor market is still (relatively) tight and inflation has cooled from its pandemic peak, albeit *checks notes* inflation remains &ldquo;somewhat elevated.&rdquo;
Powell danced around the topic of interest rates, saying the shifting balance of risks &ldquo;may warrant&rdquo; changes, subtly planting the seed that rate cuts could be on the table as soon as September.
He insists the Federal Open Market Committee is sticking to its religion of data-driven decisions, not influenced by politics &mdash; even though President Trump has been clamoring for rate cuts. But Powell (exasperatedly?) stands behind the Fed&rsquo;s dual mandate: balancing employment and price stability.
In the end, Powell&rsquo;s speech was all about keeping options open; no wild rides, just the usual cautious maneuvering. At his final curtain bow in Jackson Hole, it&rsquo;s clear he wants to be remembered as the guy who tried, at the very least, to soft land the plane.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Does the Fed have Wall Street&rsquo;s back again? The market certainly seems to think so&hellip; Stocks are rallying today with the Dow gaining 2% to 45,700 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq (+1.85%) and S&amp;P 500 (+1.60%) are up to 21,490 and 6,470 respectively.
But it&rsquo;s a different story for crude; oil&rsquo;s slightly in the red at $63.50 for a barrel of WTI. Precious metals, on the other hand, are getting some love. The price of gold is up almost 1% to $3,413.10 per ounce, and silver&rsquo;s gained 2.25%, just under $39 now.
The crypto market, which has been hammered this week, is likewise soaring: At the time of writing, Bitcoin&rsquo;s up 3.85% to $116,500 while Ethereum&rsquo;s up an impressive 9.5% to $4,635.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Money on the Move
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />For much of the past year, the stock market has been propelled by a familiar group of mega-cap tech giants. 
&ldquo;Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla captured investor attention,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s retirement-and-income specialist Zach Scheidt. &ldquo;Artificial intelligence and cloud computing fueled a wave of enthusiasm, lifting these household names even as economic uncertainty lingered.&rdquo;
But now that dominance appears to be fading. &ldquo;The once-untouchable highflyers are showing cracks,&rdquo; Zach explains. With profit-taking emerging, investors are rotating toward new opportunities.
&ldquo;This doesn&rsquo;t spell doom for technology,&rdquo; he adds, &ldquo;but it does flash a warning sign. For many investors, now is the time to take some gains off the table.&rdquo;
Where is that money going? One surprising development is a renewed interest in smaller technology firms.
&ldquo;Instead of the giants with enormous valuations, attention is turning toward niche companies with unique patents, specialized AI tools or newly commercialized technologies,&rdquo; Zach notes. These early players may hold more upside than the familiar titans.
But the rotation story doesn&rsquo;t end with tech&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Two areas stand out to me in particular: biotech and homebuilders,&rdquo; Zach says.
&ldquo;For years, biotech stocks have been stagnant, weighed down by regulatory uncertainty, high research costs and a lack of enthusiasm compared to flashier tech themes.
&ldquo;The result has been a buildup of pressure beneath the surface.&rdquo;
Compressed valuations create &ldquo;a powerful setup whenever momentum returns.&rdquo; For broad exposure, Zach points to the iShares Biotechnology ETF (IBB).
Homebuilders are also gaining traction. &ldquo;Housing affordability looks bleak,&rdquo; Zach admits, &ldquo;but markets often price in change early.&rdquo; If interest rates fall, home demand could rebound sharply. ETFs including ITB and XHB offer straightforward sector access.
&ldquo;In this environment,&rdquo; Zach concludes, &ldquo;flexibility is key. The market is rotating &mdash; and recognizing where the money is flowing next is how investors stay ahead.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />A Nord Stream &ldquo;Saboteur&rdquo; Is Arrested
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The Nord Stream pipeline sabotage will stand as one of the most instrumental events in 21st-century history. 
On Sept. 26, 2022, underwater explosions tore through three of the four Nord Stream natural gas pipelines running beneath the Baltic Sea between Russia and Europe. These pipelines had been a key conduit for Russian natural gas supplies to Germany and much of Western Europe since Nord Stream 1&rsquo;s launch over a decade ago.
The blasts unleashed massive gas leaks near Denmark&rsquo;s Bornholm Island; in fact, it was the largest natural gas leak ever recorded. Moreover, the damage pushed an already fraught geopolitical conflict into new territory.
The incident occurred amid rising tensions triggered by Russia&rsquo;s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. And though the explosions were unmistakably acts of sabotage &mdash; confirmed via explosive residue and seismic data &mdash; the saboteur who executed the attacks remains fiercely contested.
Bear in mind, the U.S. long opposed Nord Stream 2&rsquo;s completion, fearing it would deepen Europe&rsquo;s energy dependence on Moscow, thereby enhancing Russia&rsquo;s leverage in the region.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1C6jiZA8F6ep3l4x5jXFHS/732fbd27d087a83c204bd24496cf7c6a/condoleeza_tweet.jpg" alt="red. tweet" width="350px" />
<a href="https://x.com/redstreamnet/status/1673329288500727812" target="_blank" rel="noopener">On the record:</a> Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at German channel N24 about U.S. energy aspirations (May 16, 2014).
More specifically, President Joe Biden publicly promised to &ldquo;bring an end&rdquo; to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia were to invade Ukraine.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />In February 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report naming the U.S. Navy as the perpetrator, with divers planting explosives during covert NATO operations months before the invasion.
Hersh cited secret planning within the Biden administration, a collaboration with Norway and a use of modified submarines &mdash; all vehemently denied by U.S. officials. (Despite Hersh&rsquo;s impressive track record of major scoops, <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2023/02/10/the-c-word-conspiracy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">he was branded a &ldquo;c&rdquo; word.)</a>
Complicating matters further, Western media and the CIA floated a narrative involving a <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/orphan-drug-breakthrough/#3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&ldquo;pro-Ukrainian&rdquo;</a> team using a rented yacht, the Andromeda, to deploy explosives. Critics, however, question the plausibility of this theory due to extreme technical challenges.
Just how implausible? A report published in August 2024 details how German news network ARD chartered the Andromeda, discovering the 49-foot yacht was poorly maintained and ill-equipped for the complex task of attaching explosives 260 feet underwater &mdash; a mission that would have required a team of expert divers and specialized gear, possibly including a crane and decompression chamber.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/DMvMKJHVc8I33IAA49GGv/4f6463cd03ced8a0cdeec6b15c9531ea/nord_damage.png" alt="Damage to the Nord Stream pipeline" />
Courtesy: NDR Damage to the Nord Stream pipeline
The Andromeda was so unseaworthy, by the way, that the captain and crew pulled the plug on ARD&rsquo;s Baltic Sea investigation, hiring a &ldquo;professional&rdquo; vessel instead.
Which brings us to Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025: Italian authorities arrested Serhii K., a former Ukrainian military officer, accused of leading the sabotage team behind the Nord Stream pipeline attacks. German prosecutors allege he commanded a group including two soldiers and four civilian divers, covertly recruited by a Ukrainian military unit, to plant explosives on the pipelines
Ukraine, meanwhile, continues to deny involvement; that said, the arrest this week marks the first legal action implicating a patsy &mdash; er, suspect &mdash; in the Nord Stream operation. Stay tuned&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Stupid Rebranding Tricks
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Earlier this year, the cable news network MSNBC decided it was time for a major rebrand. 
For context, MSNBC was formed from a partnership in 1996 between Microsoft and NBC News. This collaboration saw Microsoft investing $220 million for a 50% stake in the cable channel.
The idea was to create a news outlet that could leverage both NBC&rsquo;s traditional broadcast capabilities and Microsoft&rsquo;s internet expertise. Its name: a portmanteau, combining &ldquo;MSN,&rdquo; Microsoft's internet brand, with the peacock network.
Now, almost three decades later, the move to rebrand as MS NOW &mdash; which stands for My Source News Opinion World &mdash; marks a break from that original tech-news identity as the network spins off from NBCUniversal, dropping both the original name and the iconic peacock logo.
Sounds very corporate and strategic, right? But the chosen web domain for MS NOW (namely, msnow&zwnj;.&zwnj;com) actually links to a South Korean site explaining&hellip; snowmobiles.
Despite MSNBC&rsquo;s big announcement, the debacle highlights how critical domain checks are. To say nothing of the ill-advised name selection&hellip; 
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3EBbVAIonoTAaUj8Hexo0c/4816ae0811c0052a304d434fed45003c/msnow.png" alt="MSNOW Tweet" />
Another social media wag quips: &ldquo;So&hellip; is there a Mr. Now?&rdquo;
On that note, happy Friday! Take care, and enjoy your weekend.

intel hero fmf (1)

Wall Street Buried Intel

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Bitcoin&rsquo;s Power and Heat
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />For years, Finland was just a small Nordic country, burdened by high costs on energy imports. Yet all that changed dramatically in 2023 when the nation flipped the switch on Olkiluoto-3, a nuclear reactor decades in the making.
This powerhouse is capable of producing up to 1.6 gigawatts of electricity at any moment &mdash; a staggering capacity that makes it one of the largest nuclear plants in the world. To put it simply, this single facility elevates Finland into a whole new league in energy generation.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/13ugtiRl78ID8PWBzrL8PD/5c57e505512a424aa08c834e276ab077/olkiluoto3.png" alt="Olkiluoto-3" />
Courtesy: TVO
For a country once deeply reliant on expensive Russian energy, Olkiluoto-3 signifies true independence and, more importantly, a surplus of power. When combined with Finland&rsquo;s rapidly growing wind sector &mdash; now providing about a quarter of the nation&rsquo;s electricity &mdash; the result has been an embarrassment of riches: a grid producing far more energy than needed.
&ldquo;In 2023 alone, Finland had more than 800 hours of negative electricity prices,&rdquo; notes Paradigm editor Chris Campbell. &ldquo;The grid literally paid people to take power off their hands.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />That&rsquo;s where Bitcoin comes in: Crypto mining companies quickly moved in to harness Finland&rsquo;s excess electricity.
Finland&rsquo;s cities rely on vast district heating networks &mdash; pipes traditionally heated by coal, peat or imported wood. But now, instead of wasting heat by releasing it into the arctic air, Bitcoin miners are channeling 70&deg;C water directly into these systems.
Already, one relatively modest 2-megawatt mining site is warming a community of 11,000 residents. &ldquo;Selling heat to cities can reduce their energy costs by 20&ndash;30%,&rdquo; Chris explains.
This isn&rsquo;t just a feel-good story; it&rsquo;s a clear example of how Bitcoin is evolving from a mere store of value into a powerful, practical utility.
Bitcoin rigs aren&rsquo;t just minting coins &mdash; they stabilize the grid during low demand, extend equipment lifespan thanks to Finland&rsquo;s cold climate and keep homes warm when global energy security feels shaky.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Finland is a case study in what happens when the curve bends: Abundance forces you to invent new ways to capture, store or redirect value,&rdquo; Chris adds.
Unlike neighboring Sweden and Norway &mdash; where mining faces restrictions and crackdowns &mdash; Finland has taken a different approach. This welcoming stance has positioned the country as an emerging hub for what many are calling the next financial and energy revolution.
Last week at the BTCHEL 2025 conference in Helsinki, the atmosphere was electric &mdash; both literally and figuratively. Chris was in the audience, witnessing firsthand the innovation and energy driving Finland&rsquo;s future.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/gcwivyIsQY8Z9gW4enXBg/6423866b94ab0ce4d6c6ffdf9069b80f/btchel2025.png" alt="A panel discussion at BTCHEL 2025" />
Courtesy: Xellox.io A panel discussion at BTCHEL 2025
Attendees weren&rsquo;t just there for panels and networking; they were witnessing something extraordinary: a country that once depended heavily on Russian energy now harnessing nuclear power and Bitcoin mining to reinvent its infrastructure and economy.
For investors, innovators and everyday people alike, Finland offers a striking glimpse of Bitcoin&rsquo;s true potential. It&rsquo;s about more than speculation &mdash; it&rsquo;s about real-world utility, resilience and the reinvention of value. &ldquo;And that makes all the difference,&rdquo; says Chris, &ldquo;in the new rules of money.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Careful What You Wish For
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;As far as the economy, cutting rates is not the sign of a good economy,&rdquo; comments Paradigm&rsquo;s macro expert Jim Rickards. This ahead of Jerome Powell&rsquo;s speech tomorrow at 10 a.m. EST at the Fed&rsquo;s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. (More on that Friday.)
&ldquo;What does a strong economy look like?&rdquo; Jim posits. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s when banks are lending and people want to borrow for their investment opportunities. I would expect interest rates to be around 5%. And at that level I&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;OK, I&rsquo;ll borrow at 5% because I can invest at 15% and I can use 10:1 leverage and make 150% return.&rsquo;
&ldquo;That kind of risk-taking, lending, spending, investing &mdash; that is what a strong economy looks like, and it&rsquo;s associated with rates of 4%, 5%, 6%. What that means is that there&rsquo;s a demand for funds, banks are willing to lend and you have a healthy economy.
&ldquo;When I see rates at the short-term end going down, then that tells me the economy is weak,&rdquo; Jim adds. &ldquo;Trump should be careful what he wishes for. Low interest rates are not stimulus and are not a sign of economic strength. They are associated with recession and even depression.
&ldquo;Trump may get his lower rates,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;but may be shocked by the kind of economy that comes with them.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Walmart reported second-quarter earnings with revenue beating expectations and U.S. same-store sales rising 4.6%, prompting the company to raise its full-year sales forecast.
Before the market opened today, the company announced second-quarter earnings with adjusted earnings per share of $0.68, which missed the analyst expectation of $0.74. However, revenue exceeded forecasts at $177.4 billion, beating the estimate of $176.05 billion. But the company missed profit estimates due to rising costs from tariffs and more. At the time of writing? WMT shares are down about 3.85%.
Taking a look at the broader outlook on stocks, the three major U.S. stock indexes are all down about 0.35% to 44,780 (Dow), 6,370 (S&amp;P 500) and 21,085 (Nasdaq).
Commodities, meanwhile, are in the green. The price of crude&rsquo;s up 0.75% to $63.20 for a barrel of WTI. Gold&rsquo;s taking a breather at $3,389 per ounce, and silver&rsquo;s up 1% to $38.15.
But crypto&rsquo;s down today: Bitcoin&rsquo;s lost 1.15% to $112,750; Ethereum&rsquo;s down 2.15% to $4,230.
Finally for market notes, we mention a few economic indicators&hellip;
<ul>
<li>The Department of Labor reports the number of people filing for unemployment benefits rose by 11,000 last week, reaching a total of 235,000. This increase is meaningfully higher than the consensus estimate around 225,000 claims. Additionally, the number of people still receiving unemployment benefits increased by 30,000 &mdash; reaching nearly 2 million &mdash; which is the highest level since November 2021</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Manufacturing Index dropped off a cliff to -0.3 in August, down from a strong 15.9 in July, signaling that manufacturing activity in the region contracted unexpectedly, despite analysts expecting a smaller decline to a positive 6.8. New orders dropped into negative territory for the first time since April, while prices paid by manufacturers rose to their highest level since May 2022.</li>
</ul>
In contrast to manufacturing activity in the Mid-Atlantic region, the overall U.S. flash manufacturing PMI shows expansion at 55.4, slightly higher than July&rsquo;s 55.1, signaling modest growth.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Buffett&rsquo;s Playbook Classic
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Despite UnitedHealth Group (UNH) being the Dow&rsquo;s worst performer in 2025, Warren Buffett saw value others missed. 
The company has faced serious challenges, including a massive earnings miss, CEO resignation, suspended forecast and Department of Justice investigation into Medicare fraud allegations. Panic ensued, sending the stock plummeting 50% &mdash; before Buffett&rsquo;s entry.
But Buffett&rsquo;s deep insurance knowledge, evidenced by his longtime ownership of GEICO, gives him confidence that negative headlines do not imply permanent damage. Crucially, UnitedHealth&rsquo;s valuation appears very attractive at 13 times earnings, well below peers Humana and Cigna, making it a bargain.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />As Paradigm editor Davis Wilson explains, Buffett&rsquo;s strategy is rooted in buying when others flee.
Beneath the turmoil, UnitedHealth remains a health care powerhouse, generating $400 billion in revenue and $15 billion in profit last year. It dominates as the nation&rsquo;s largest health insurer and manages Optum, a vast data and services business. Its Medicare Advantage segment serves nearly one-third of Americans on the program.
Berkshire Hathaway also took new positions in sectors like homebuilding, steel and advertising, sticking to Buffett&rsquo;s playbook: buying durable businesses during downturns and holding long term.
As Davis notes, Buffett&rsquo;s UnitedHealth bet is a textbook example of his timeless lesson: Be greedy when others are fearful &mdash; and right now, health care fear has created opportunity.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Black Hills&rsquo; New Gold Rush
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />South Dakota&rsquo;s Black Hills region is seeing a resurgence in mining activity as modern companies eye rich mineral deposits that have been underused for decades. 
The Black Hills have a strong mining history dating back to the 19th-century gold rush, but new projects signal a fresh wave of development.
Notably, Dakota Gold is planning an open-pit gold mine near the historic Homestake site, targeting production to begin around 2029. Existing operations, like the one owned by Coeur Mining, also continue to contribute to the region&rsquo;s mineral output.
New mining initiatives are projected to create hundreds of jobs, providing a boost to local economies. Dakota Gold, for instance, anticipates around 250 jobs at its mine site, along with substantial tax revenues for the state &mdash; potentially reaching hundreds of millions of dollars over the mine&rsquo;s lifespan.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />While the economic benefits are clear, the mining revival does come with some concerns about environmental and cultural impacts. However, proponents argue that with responsible management, mining can coexist with preservation efforts.
Modern mining techniques enable companies to extract valuable metals more efficiently than in the past, unlocking resources that were once considered hard to access. This makes the Black Hills region competitive as demand for precious metals remains strong globally.
&ldquo;People still want the old myths about gold towns,&rdquo; says Martin O&rsquo;Neill, who oversees operations at Wharf Resources, &ldquo;but we&rsquo;re showing it can be done smart and clean.&rdquo;
Wharf Resources operates the largest active gold and silver mine in the Black Hills, located near Lead, South Dakota. Owned by Coeur Mining, the open-pit mine has been running since the early 1980s and employs about 260 local workers.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5JPyVGV29QQquTmZIw0s00/1a947fd861eacbe7af820148a381dae1/open_pit_Mine.png" alt="open-pit mine" />
Courtesy: Coeur Mining, South Dakota
The mine includes several pits and significantly contributes to regional gold production, accounting for nearly a quarter of Coeur&rsquo;s total gold output. Wharf Resources has expanded operations under a large-scale mining permit granted in 2012.
Overall, renewed mining activity in the Black Hills offers promising economic growth. But it&rsquo;s a balancing act: acknowledging, at the same time, the need to protect the area&rsquo;s unique environment and cultural heritage.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Your Takes: Buybacks &amp; BigCharts
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />"Can't remember who or when I read that when it comes to buybacks, most management teams buy at the wrong time,&rdquo; a contributor notes. &ldquo;The stock price, due to good times, is on its way up. Kind of a vicious cycle.&rdquo;
Another writes: &ldquo;If we look at past peaks in equity values, say in early 2000 and 2008, I would bet we had an increase in share buybacks, similar to what we have today. Then look out a couple of years and see where the share prices were then. I would bet we will see that management bought peaks, not valleys. Is Berkshire Hathaway buying now? Nope, they don't buy peaks. They buy dips.
&ldquo;Also interesting to note that insiders are big SELLERS now while their companies are buyers. Seems to be a dichotomy there.&rdquo;
Emily: Unfortunately for ordinary investors, buybacks often happen when stocks are riding high and not when value is most compelling. As Dave says, buybacks can sometimes signal confidence, but just as often, they simply reflect that <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-backseat-drivers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">management teams</a> have <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/good-for-wall-street-bad-for-main-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">few better ideas for cash.</a>
As for Berkshire, they tend to wait to buy back their own stock when shares are undervalued, a lesson many CEOs could do well to learn. And yes, the disconnect between insider selling and corporate buybacks is always worth watching closely.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re familiar with StockCharts.com. I don&rsquo;t know how it compares to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wall-streets-backseat-drivers/#4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BigCharts,</a> but I like it,&rdquo; says a longtime reader.
&ldquo;You can noodle around with settings and achieve the desired minimalism. Plus, you can choose different color schemes. Check out the Color Vision Impaired setting (even if you&rsquo;re not). It&rsquo;s friendly to aging eyes!
&ldquo;Pages load quickly even with fuddy-duddy internet service.&rdquo;
Emily: StockCharts.com is indeed a worthy alternative, and its customization settings make it surprisingly user-friendly &mdash; especially for eyes that have been squinting at screens! Thank you for sharing the tip for &ldquo;Color Vision Impaired.&rdquo; Very inclusive.
Take care, reader! Join us tomorrow for a fresh 5 Bullets&hellip;

finland power hero

Bitcoin’s Real-World Utility

fmf hero buybacks

Wall Street’s Backseat Drivers

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Boomtown Dreams
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />"I have nothing against it, but it's pretty hush-hush around here," says a retiree named Garry Teske. "We don't hear much."
&ldquo;Here&rdquo; is Beulah, North Dakota &mdash; in the western half of the state, population just over 3,000.
And &ldquo;it&rdquo; is a project transforming a shuttered coal mine into a processing plant for nickel ore arriving from next-door Minnesota.
"Basically, when you put all your eggs in one basket and something changes, it makes it difficult for your community to thrive and continue to grow," says Beulah&rsquo;s economic development director Beaver Brinkman. "Hopefully, this will take and diversify our economy."
The hope and expectation is the plant will bring new jobs, maybe even restoring Beulah&rsquo;s boomtown days.
Not everyone around town is sold but at the same time, &ldquo;there's no organized opposition,&rdquo; says a recent NPR story.
Perhaps not surprisingly, NPR&rsquo;s piece goes out of its way to tell listeners this project began under the Biden administration &mdash; and that nickel is essential for electric-vehicle batteries.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />But the project fits in perfectly with the Trump administration&rsquo;s mining-and-energy agenda &mdash; leveraging the $150 trillion mineral bounty that Paradigm&rsquo;s Jim Rickards calls the &ldquo;American Birthright.&rdquo;
Apart from its role in EV batteries, nickel helps to strengthen steel. Thus it&rsquo;s of immense interest to the U.S. military.
"What the Pentagon's trying to do is to lock in and preserve these raw materials for the highly sophisticated, technologically advanced warfare that the United States wields today,&rdquo; retired Marine Gen. John Allen tells NPR.
Too, there&rsquo;s the whole breaking-the-China-habit thing.
"The United States and Europe and other of the technologically advanced societies sort of backed themselves into an environment where we imported a lot of these materials,&rdquo; says Allen &mdash; &ldquo;mostly from China.&rdquo;
(For the record, Allen is a Democrat &mdash; he was on the short list to be Hillary Clinton&rsquo;s running mate in 2016 &mdash; but there&rsquo;s nothing he says here that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would take issue with&hellip;)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />To be sure, the Trump administration has done nothing to reverse Biden&rsquo;s $114 million grant for the nickel-processing plant. Nor another $20 million matching grant to look for more minerals in the United States.
The beneficiary of these grants is Talon Metals Corp. &mdash; a penny stock trading in Canada under the ticker TLO and on the U.S. pink sheets as TLOFF.
➢ Strictly speaking, Talon owns 51% of the Minnesota mine, with the mining giant Rio Tinto holding the other 49%. In addition to nickel, the mine produces copper and cobalt &mdash; both of which are also viewed by the Trump administration as &ldquo;strategic.&rdquo;
For whatever it&rsquo;s worth, despite the Biden administration&rsquo;s support, Talon&rsquo;s share price fell steadily during much of the Biden years.
But starting in late March, its fortunes have reversed dramatically thanks to a string of good drill results &mdash; the U.S.-traded shares leaping from 6 cents to over 27 cents this morning.

As impressive as a 350% gain is in only five months&hellip; Jim Rickards says much bigger Birthright gains are to be found right now in the Utah desert.
<a id="2"></a>
We told you yesterday how Jim was so impressed, he urged Paradigm VP of Research Aaron Gentzler to go see it for himself.
They&rsquo;re in total agreement. They see profit potential over the next 12 months of 4,800%. If you haven&rsquo;t followed along for Aaron&rsquo;s on-site visit, <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2470131" target="_blank" rel="noopener">you really need to follow this link and give it a look</a>.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Mutual Suspicion
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />For everything you see these days about the Trump administration trying to &ldquo;de-risk&rdquo; or &ldquo;decouple&rdquo; from China&hellip; the sentiment runs both ways.
&ldquo;Although U.S. Treasuries have not yet reached the default threshold, their expansion is unsustainable,&rdquo; says an article published by researchers at Bank of China.
Bank of China is one of China&rsquo;s Big Four banks. The article turns up in China Money &mdash; a publication supervised by China&rsquo;s central bank, the People&rsquo;s Bank of China.
So this assessment doesn&rsquo;t come out of nowhere. It has a very official stamp of approval.
The report has been picked up by Hong Kong&rsquo;s newspaper of record, the South China Morning Post: &ldquo;Calls for China to gradually reduce its exposure to U.S. dollar assets are growing louder as Washington&rsquo;s national debt continues to set records,&rdquo; says the paper &mdash; &ldquo;reigniting persistent worries over the long-term sustainability of an investment formerly considered rock-solid&hellip;
&ldquo;China has been trimming its U.S. Treasury holdings for three consecutive months, while keeping them roughly unchanged at the US$756 billion level in June, according to data released on Friday by the U.S. Treasury Department. This remains the lowest level since March 2009.&rdquo;
The Bank of China article casts doubt on the Trump administration&rsquo;s major gambit &mdash; that it can goose economic growth to such an extent that the resulting tax revenue would start chipping away at Washington&rsquo;s $37 trillion debt burden.
The authors&rsquo; conclusions: &ldquo;[We need to] gradually adjust U.S. Treasury holdings and appropriately increase reserves of gold, key resources and strategic materials.&rdquo;
You could do worse than adjust your portfolio in line with the Bank of China&rsquo;s recommendations: Long-term U.S. Treasuries will be a long-term loser in the decades to come (even if they serve up short-term trade opportunities now and then)... while precious metals, base metals and energy are set to thrive.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />As for the stock market this week, it&rsquo;s been like watching paint dry.
After meandering yesterday, the S&amp;P 500 is down about 0.4% as we write today &mdash; resting at 6,423. For perspective, that level was a record only last week.
Gold is similarly unexciting, the bid $3,321. But silver is on sale &mdash; down 54 cents to $37.40. Ditto for Bitcoin, now under $114,000 for the first time in two weeks.
It&rsquo;s a big week for retail earnings &mdash; and Mr. Market likes the report from Home Depot. HD whiffed on both the top and bottom lines&hellip; but stuck to its guidance for the rest of the year. With that, HD shares are up 3.2% at last check.
The big economic number of the day is a good news-bad news proposition: Housing starts blew out Wall Street&rsquo;s expectations, up 12.9% year-over year. But permits &mdash; a better indication of future activity &mdash; rang in well below expectations, down 5.7% from a year earlier.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Regime Change&hellip; or Cheaper Crude?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />U.S. oil prices sit near their summer lows this morning at $62.80 &mdash; thanks in part to fresh inflows of Venezuelan crude.
Going back to the first Trump administration, the U.S. government has repeatedly flip-flopped on Venezuela &mdash; sometimes amping up sanctions in hopes of toppling President Nicolas Maduro, other times easing the sanctions to keep Venezuelan crude flowing northward.
Last month brought an easing &mdash; the second Trump administration restoring Chevron&rsquo;s license to operate in Venezuela.
&ldquo;The Mediterranean Voyager and Canopus Voyager left Venezuelan waters on Friday loaded with Hamaca and Boscan heavy crudes, bound for the U.S. West Coast and Port Arthur, Texas, respectively,&rdquo; reports Julianne Geiger at the OilPrice website.
Chevron&rsquo;s reinstated license, Geiger writes, &ldquo;carries a crucial caveat: No revenues can flow to the Maduro government, an attempt to walk the line between sanctions enforcement and U.S. supply needs.&rdquo;
For all the bountiful crude coming out of America&rsquo;s shale patch, there&rsquo;s a problem: It&rsquo;s &ldquo;light, sweet&rdquo; oil, and U.S. refineries aren&rsquo;t equipped to process much of it.
U.S. refineries have long been geared toward thick, sulfurous grades of crude &mdash; and Venezuela has the world&rsquo;s biggest deposits of that stuff.
&ldquo;Heavy Venezuelan grades remain prized by U.S. Gulf refiners for their compatibility with coking units designed to run on similar slates from Mexico and Canada,&rdquo; Geiger continues.
&ldquo;With Mexico cutting heavy crude exports and Canada&rsquo;s pipeline flows constrained, Chevron&rsquo;s return could ease sourcing headaches for refiners like Valero, which is reportedly negotiating a supply deal for part of Chevron&rsquo;s share.&rdquo;
Chevron (CVX) stock has appreciated over 14% in the last three months; it&rsquo;s a favorite of our Jim Rickards. Valero (VLO) has been range-bound in the same time frame.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Price on Zuck&rsquo;s Life: $27 Million
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />How much is Mark Zuckerberg&rsquo;s life worth?
Or to put it another way, is it worth more than the CEOs of the other megacap tech-adjacent companies combined?
The Financial Times recently looked into 10 major tech companies and the amount of money they spend on personal security for their high-profile, hot-button bosses.
Put together, they spent over $45 million in 2024. And well over half that total &mdash; $27 million &mdash; was spent by Meta on protecting Zuck.
No one else came close&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Alphabet spent $6.8 million protecting Sundar Pinchai</li>
<li>Nvidia dropped $3.5 million to safeguard Jensen Huang</li>
<li>Apple spent $1.4 million protecting Tim Cook</li>
<li>Amazon plunked down $1.1 million on Andrew Jassy (and another $1.6 million on the founder known in some quarters as &ldquo;Beelzebezos.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
Elon Musk, you ask? Tesla says it spent $500,000 on Musk&rsquo;s security last year &mdash; but presumably his many other companies, the ones not publicly traded, help cover his security costs. (Never mind that one of them is a private security firm! It&rsquo;s called Foundation Security.)
So why is Zuckerberg such an outlier among CEOs of public companies?
&ldquo;Meta&rsquo;s costs are much higher than its peers&rsquo; because the group has agreed to provide security directly for members of Zuckerberg&rsquo;s family, and not just the executive himself,&rdquo; says the FT. &ldquo;As both the chief executive and founder of Facebook, Zuckerberg has maintained majority voting power, giving him greater influence over board decisions than his counterparts.&rdquo;
Whatever the case, CEO security overall is in a bull market.
Not only did Meta&rsquo;s spending for Zuck&rsquo;s security rise 17% from 2023&hellip; but Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia and Palantir all beefed up their security budgets by more than 10% year-over-year.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Is AI Too Far Over Its Skis?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I agree with Enrique Abeyta's assessment 100%,&rdquo; a reader writes after last Thursday&rsquo;s edition warning about <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/caveat-emptor1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a looming overbuild &mdash; dare we say &ldquo;bubble&rdquo; &mdash; in AI infrastructure</a>.
&ldquo;The reason? Quantum-based software stacks already outperform what the biggest, baddest, fastest AI chips have ALL been built on: the old relational legacy platform that today is really obsolete and very much input/output limited; always will be. Surprise! Quantum runs on current (legacy) hardware also.
&ldquo;Yes, the new NVDA (and other) chips are blazing fast but are vastly slower in computational power, as they all are I/O limited to what quantum computing can do today, as in right now.
&ldquo;Strange how Jensen Huang was asked about his opinion on quantum computing just eight months ago and he said it is still 20&ndash;30 years out, yet has just recently made positive comments about it. I believe he is fully aware of the numerous limitations of legacy programming-based &lsquo;AI&rsquo;, such as permitting, off-scale power consumption, far-beyond-reasonable cooling requirements and consuming hundreds if not thousands of acres of both public and private land for just one data center.
&ldquo;When will adequate power become available? It is simply not available today and a recipe for disaster.
&ldquo;AI is all the hype, to be sure. Every company (such as yours) is putting it &lsquo;all in&rsquo; various rehearsed and boring webinars.
&ldquo;Why not use a computer that runs on 1,000 watts of power, that you can hold in your hand, requires no special cooling, takes up far less space than a kitchen dining room table and runs a thousand times faster for the same output that AI is all the brag about?
&ldquo;When this word gets out to the savvy public, and it will, that will be the death of AI as it is currently being presented.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Your conviction is admirable. Presumably you&rsquo;ve put your money where your mouth is.
But you&rsquo;re looking at some long-term bets &mdash; things that could take years to pay off, and with heart-stopping levels of volatility along the way.
Off the top of my head, there&rsquo;s one quantum computing name in the Atlucher&rsquo;s Investment Network portfolio. It&rsquo;s up 108% in just under two years &mdash; but it took a 63% plunge just in the first quarter of this year!
If you&rsquo;re willing to construct a portfolio jam-packed with names like that&hellip; and hold onto them for dear life&hellip; and for years at a time&hellip; more power to you. (I suppose I&rsquo;ve done the same with gold miners, come to think of it.)
But most folks don&rsquo;t have that kind of patience or risk tolerance. And while we&rsquo;re not a mass medium, our entry-level newsletters do reach tens of thousands of subscribers.
So by and large, the quantum names recommended by the Paradigm editors have been short-term affairs in our more costly trading services &mdash; taking advantage of chart patterns, fleeting narratives and sheer momentum to capture high double- or triple-digit gains in a matter of weeks or months.
Quantum&rsquo;s time will come. But as the saying goes, events that are inevitable aren&rsquo;t necessarily imminent!

china-nickel-fmf-hero (1) (1)

Breaking the China Habit

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Trump&rsquo;s Billion-Dollar Energy Bet
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />"For too long, the United States has relied on foreign actors to supply and process the critical materials that are essential to modern life and our national security,&rdquo; says Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
With that in mind &mdash; as well as an executive order issued by Donald Trump as soon as he returned to the White House &mdash; Wright made a big announcement a few days ago.
The Energy Department is taking about $1 billion of its $161 billion annual budget&hellip; and using it &ldquo;to speed the development of U.S. critical minerals and materials, used in everything from electric vehicle batteries to semiconductors,&rdquo; reports the Reuters newswire.
&ldquo;The department intends to offer funding to advance and scale up mining, processing and manufacturing technologies in the critical minerals and materials supply chains, sectors that have been dominated by China and other countries.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;China holds a dominant global position in the supply of critical minerals and rare earths, but its grip on the value chain &mdash; minerals processing and magnet production &mdash; is even tighter,&rdquo; writes Irina Slav at the OilPrice website.
If all of this seems to dovetail with the &ldquo;American Birthright&rdquo; thesis of Paradigm&rsquo;s own Jim Rickards, you&rsquo;re absolutely right.
As Jim&rsquo;s been telling us from the moment Trump returned to the presidency, the administration is keen to tap into the mineral wealth on federal lands, a bounty worth as much as $150 trillion.
Whatever your opinion of federal subsidies to business&hellip; it&rsquo;s apparent the Energy Department is betting this $1 billion outlay will pay back many times over.
The breakdown, according to an Energy Department statement, goes something like this&hellip;
<ul>
<li>$500 million &ldquo;to expand U.S. critical mineral and materials processing and derivative battery manufacturing and recycling&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>$250 million in aid &ldquo;for American industrial facilities that have the potential to produce valuable mineral byproducts from existing industrial processes&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>$135 million &ldquo;to enhance domestic supply chains for rare earth elements&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>$50 million for something called the Critical Minerals and Materials Accelerator program, which encompasses everything from rare earths to lithium to silicon carbide for semiconductors</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>$40 million &ldquo;to develop technologies to recover critical minerals from industrial wastewater.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
To make sure the feds won&rsquo;t be pouring money down a black hole, there are strings attached for any company that wants access to these funds: They&rsquo;ll have to pony up at least half the cost of whatever project it is that they want subsidized.
The Paradigm team will keep a close eye on which companies apply for this aid &mdash; and which ones have an inside track for approval.
Before it&rsquo;s all over, this $1 billion program could serve up at least a half-dozen lucrative plays &mdash; and some of these awards could be announced before year-end.

That said, you don&rsquo;t have to wait anywhere near that long to start collecting big Birthright gains.
In fact, one opportunity is so urgent that Jim Rickards recently asked my colleague of 18 years &mdash; Paradigm VP of Research Aaron Gentzler &mdash; to visit a remote patch of federal land in Utah.
What Aaron found confirmed everything Jim suspected; the Birthright story is about to move into Phase II &mdash; typically the most profitable phase in every resource-investing boom.
The 12-month profit potential is 4,800% &mdash; for reasons Aaron will show you <a href="https://pro.paradigm-press.info/m/2469648" target="_blank" rel="noopener">when you click to watch his on-the-spot report</a>.

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Trump&rsquo;s New Reality Show
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Depending on what you read, the number of people Donald Trump is considering to replace Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair is as high as 11.
And Powell still has nine months remaining in his term.
If something strikes you about this process that seems familiar, Paradigm&rsquo;s jack-of-all-trades analyst Zach Scheidt says you&rsquo;re onto something.
&ldquo;In a similar vein as his old TV show The Apprentice, Trump wants to &lsquo;audition&rsquo; 11 new Fed chair candidates through a long, deliberate and very public process,&rdquo; Zach wrote on Friday for Altucher&rsquo;s True Alpha subscribers.
&ldquo;It stands to reason that these candidates could try to outdo each other in their desire to see rate cuts.
&ldquo;And four people on this list are already voting members of the Fed. What better way to demonstrate to Trump that they&rsquo;re really in favor of rate cuts than to VOTE in favor of cutting at upcoming meetings in September, October, December and January?
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s why I expect the potential for rate cuts in the near future will rise as Fed members vie to get on Trump&rsquo;s good side. This is Trump&rsquo;s &lsquo;workaround&rsquo; to getting rid of Jerome Powell.&rdquo;
Yep. Looking at the futures markets this morning, traders are pricing in an 83% probability the Fed will cut at its next meeting 31 days from today. This is one time you don&rsquo;t want to bet against conventional wisdom!
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Expectations for rate cuts are keeping a floor under the stock market, with only two weeks remaining before Labor Day weekend.
The major averages are little moved as the new week begins &mdash; but also within striking distance of all-time highs. The S&amp;P 500 is down a mere eight points from Friday&rsquo;s close at 6,442.
Not much movement in the precious metals, either &mdash; gold at $3,333 and silver a couple pennies below $38. Crude sits a hair under $63. Bitcoin has retreated below $116,000.
One economic number of note: Homebuilder sentiment is in the toilet, with the monthly housing market index from the National Association of Home Builders clocking in at 32. For reference, anything below 50 suggests lousy confidence among homebuilders. And this is the first time since the early 2010s that the number has registered four straight months under 35.
The only scheduled market-moving event this week is Jerome Powell&rsquo;s final address as Fed chair at the annual confab of global central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming on Friday.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Gold: Now Is When the Rally Really Starts
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />In addition to the three reasons not to sell your gold that were spelled out <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/dont-sell-your-gold-now" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in Friday&rsquo;s edition</a>, consider this&hellip;
It&rsquo;s only now that everyday retail investors are latching onto gold.
For three years, we&rsquo;ve chronicled how central banks have been loading up on gold at a record pace. The catalyst was the Biden administration&rsquo;s unprecedented sanctions on Russia&rsquo;s dollar-based assets &mdash; especially U.S. Treasuries.
The leaders of every other country in the world not on friendly terms with Washington wondered, Are we next? So they started grabbing gold with both hands. As our Jim Rickards has emphasized all along, &ldquo;Gold is a physical, nondigital asset that cannot be stolen, frozen or seized provided it is in safe storage.&rdquo;
But even as that central-bank buying propelled gold from $1,800 in 2022 to over $3,300 now&hellip; mom-and-pop investors sat out the rally.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Until now. Retail investors are starting to pile in.
&ldquo;You've seen it mainly reflected in the amount of physical gold held by gold-backed ETFs,&rdquo; explains Ryan McIntyre &mdash; managing partner at the Canadian resource-investing giant Sprott.
&ldquo;We've seen that actually increase for the first time in many years after bottoming out in May of last year.&rdquo;
McIntyre tells Kitco News that ETF gold holdings are up 11% year-to-date. And that&rsquo;s still down 17% from their peak in 2020.
&ldquo;Still plenty of room to go before we hit an all-time high of gold held by gold-backed ETFs,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;But you have seen the institutional and retail investor come along a little bit. To me, that's a new story.&rdquo;
As he sees it, Joe and Jane Average no longer feel complacent about the wider world: &ldquo;They've been pretty comfortable with their existing holdings, S&amp;P 500-type stocks, that type of thing. And I think for the first time in a while, they started to reassess a little bit on the risk side in terms of how much risk they're taking and how much they're willing to take.&rdquo;
Remember that no bull market takes off in a huge way until everyday folks start to participate. For instance, the epic bull market in stocks that ran from 1982&ndash;2000 saw the most explosive gains only after normie Americans entered the market en masse starting around 1995.
Based on the figures McIntyre cites, this final most lucrative stage is just beginning&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Stupid Fast-Food Promotion Tricks
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />How could McDonald&rsquo;s corporate in Japan not anticipate this outcome?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7hkajOyq4rfMoHLvBAYie1/04b7ddc20bf84edaee8fec0af4ac12d9/nintendo_wire_tweet.png" alt="Nintendo Wire tweet" />
McDonald&rsquo;s planned a three-day campaign: With every Happy Meal purchase, customers would get an exclusive set of Pokemon cards. Price? 500 yen or about $3.50. Limit five Happy Meals per customer.
The promotion was cut off after the first day: Turned out it was trivially easy for avid Pokemon collectors &mdash; and resellers &mdash; to get around the five-meals-per-customer limit with online orders.
No sooner did the campaign launch than some of the cards turned up on eBay selling for $25 or more. At the same time, &ldquo;social media feeds were filled with surreal scenes,&rdquo; reports Business Insider &mdash; &ldquo;bags of Happy Meals abandoned in stores, piled outside outlets or stuffed into bike baskets.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/423Rxv5pvZME0zjxyz7TL3/6bfa87be7e8df1880c8cbf5a47f8ab98/mcd_collage.png" alt="Abandoned Happy Meals" />
&ldquo;Congratulations on your thriving business,&rdquo; snarks an account on X that assembled this collage of pictures&hellip;
&ldquo;My McDonald&rsquo;s had zero [people] in line but there were tons of online orders,&rdquo; says Patrick Batac, a civilian contractor at the U.S. Yokota Naval Base. &ldquo;There were literally bags of Happy Meals overflowing the counters waiting to be picked up and delivered,&rdquo; he tells the military newspaper Stars and Stripes.
"McDonald's does not tolerate the purchase of Happy Meals for the purpose of resale, or the abandonment or disposal of food," said the obligatory McDonald&rsquo;s press release that was no doubt vetted by a roomful of lawyers.
That said, by many accounts the fiasco was a veritable feast for Japan&rsquo;s pigeon population&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: The Bismarck, Random Praise and Microsoft
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;The Antoni photo presented by your reader looks eerily like an amateurish AI composite,&rdquo; says a brief email that came in after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/its-trumps-war-now" target="_blank" rel="noopener">last Wednesday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
I&rsquo;ve been at this daily e-letter thing for 15 years and I&rsquo;m still surprised at times by the topics that have &ldquo;legs&rdquo; in our mailbag. To wit, a large image of the Nazi-era German warship Bismarck that appears in the background of interviews with E.J. Antoni, Donald Trump&rsquo;s nominee to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Here&rsquo;s another email, with additional background: &ldquo;It is a painting <a href="https://www.car-model-kit.com/plastic-modelkit-lod-05098-battleship-bismarck-1-700" target="_blank" rel="noopener">that was used on a Revell model kit box in 2010</a>. The artist is a well known photographer and warship painter called Danijel Frka. There are hundreds of these types of paintings that Mr. Frka has made and to single the one that Antoni has as proof of Nazi leanings is pretty far-fetched. I think this is just a person on a hair-trigger looking for any reason to be outraged!
&ldquo;There is nothing <a href="https://www.dalmatia.hr/daniel-frka/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in the artist's bio</a> that would indicate him as a go-to for Nazi propaganda. I'd be surprised if Mr. Antoni even knows what ship it is on his wall!
&ldquo;Thanks for the laugh!&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Now for some random praise: &ldquo;Just a note to say I enjoyed today's five-item update. This is a great idea. which I appreciate. Keep it up!&rdquo;
This individual sounds like a new reader, who also chimed in after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/its-trumps-war-now" target="_blank" rel="noopener">last Wednesday&rsquo;s edition</a>. Thank you, sir! Every newcomer would do well to give <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/who-we-are-and-what-were-all-about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">our &ldquo;Who We Are and What We&rsquo;re All About&rdquo; edition</a> a look, too.
Meanwhile, after Emily took the helm for last Thursday&rsquo;s and Friday&rsquo;s editions, we heard from another reader: &ldquo;Emily &mdash; Love your nonpartisan commentary and delivery, thank you.&rdquo;
Gee, was that a subtle swipe at me?
For the record, I also take a strictly nonpartisan approach: I fear and detest everyone who exercises political power.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;About a week or two ago, I stopped getting ALL emails from Paradigm Press,&rdquo; a reader writes. &ldquo;Then they showed up in my spam review at the end of the day. I released them manually for about a week, expecting the issue to clear.
&ldquo;Then I went into Microsoft Defender to figure out how to whitelist your sending emails, and have done so for three days now, each morning. So far it&rsquo;s made no difference. They still get caught, and I still have to release them manually.
&ldquo;I have to think I&rsquo;m not the only one. Please have your IT team look into this. It&rsquo;s worth the trouble to be able to read them, but I have to think that&rsquo;s not the case for everyone.
&ldquo;Keep up the great work!&rdquo;
Dave responds: Indeed you are not the only one. We&rsquo;ve been on the case for several days.
It&rsquo;s a Microsoft issue. Thus it affects readers with Hotmail or MSN accounts as well as people with corporate Outlook accounts. We&rsquo;re working with Microsoft to remedy the situation as soon as possible.
We thank you for your patience. In the meantime, you can always keep up with these daily missives at <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Paradigm Pressroom website</a>.
And very soon you&rsquo;ll be able to keep up with all your Paradigm content &mdash; both the free stuff and your paid subscriptions &mdash; via the snazzy new Paradigm Press app, available through both Apple and Google. Stay tuned&hellip;